#people hundreds of years into the future will form a religion around you probably. and you will be worshipped as a goddess. as you deserve | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

cinaja · 3 years ago

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Before the Wall part 61

Masterlist

----

Initially, moving everyone to Cretea seemed like a brilliant solution to a terrible situation. In practice, though, it soon turns out that there are about a hundred problems attached that Miryam didn’t see coming at the first glance.

The first issue is, obviously, that most of their people do not want to move to Cretea. In spite of knowing about Shey and the other Fae members of the Alliance wanting them dead, the Seraphim still thought they would be able to return home to Erithia, and they are understandably reluctant to leave their home behind. The idea of moving to an island that is considered holy in their religion does little to ease their unhappiness, either. Meanwhile, the humans are theoretically fine with moving to some island they never heard of before, but are far from pleased at the prospect of having to share that island with a group of Fae.

Convincing everyone to go along with the plan takes days, and it only works because the alternative is to risk getting murdered. There are several concessions that need to be made, though. For one, it quickly becomes apparent that the Seraphim will only agree to come along if their friends and families can come as well. That was not initially something Miryam and Drakon had planned for – no need to drag more people than absolutely necessary into it, after all – but the Seraphim refuse to leave otherwise, and so they have no choice but to spirit the hundreds of thousands of Erithians still waiting in Erithia away to their camp. The attack they stage to cover their tracks is not exactly a good trick, but they hope that in the general chaos ensuing all over the Continent right now, no one will think to double-check.

Meanwhile, the humans come up with a few demands of their own to assure their safety. Most importantly, they downright refuse to be ruled over by any Fae. (“No offence to your husband,” Niria, who relays the decision to Miryam, says, “He seems nice enough, but he’s still Fae.”) Miryam would have picked Niria for the job of leading the humans, but everyone else seems to agree that it will obviously be her who takes up the role, and she has to admit that it’s convenient for an eventual unity within their soon-to-be-formed country to have the rulers of the Fae and humans already married to each other. Eventually, they might actually manage to get a unified government for all people living on Cretea, but for the moment, it is agreed upon that humans and Fae will be governed separately, with an option of merging the two governments eventually should both sides agree.

By the time they finally move on to the next issue (how to get everyone to Cretea), the Continent has already completely dissolved into chaos. They had to pull in most of their spies, but Andromache, who drops by almost every day, keeps them well-informed.

“It is a mess,” she says one day, looking drained enough that Miryam wordlessly hands her a mug of tea and gently pushes her towards the nearest chair. “Millions of people on the move everywhere. All roads are crowded, and the soldiers are busy day and night trying to keep the violence between groups at bay. And we still haven’t got any idea where to put most of these people.”

For the most part, Miryam just tries not to think about it. She doesn’t want to imagine these millions of people who are forced to leave their homes and travel through the entire Continent into the unknown, doesn’t want to think that this was not the future she was hoping for when she dreamt of what a world after the war might look like. (We won, she reminds herself. That’s all that really counts. Any other problems, we will find a way to deal with.)

There are many things she is trying very hard not to think too much about. Her death, for example. Or the wall that will soon go up and the people who will have to die for it to happen. Or how the entire mess the world has been turned into is, in some way, because of her. During the days when she is too busy to spend much time thinking, it works for the most part. At night, it’s a different matter.

At the end of the day, she’s still one of the lucky ones, though. Unlike so many others, at least she isn’t losing her home. Of course, there are places she will miss, Erithia and Telique for one. But she never truly had a place she considered home, not really, so there is no home for her to lose now. Her home were always other people, and most of those will be coming with her.

It more difficult for Drakon. He is trying very hard to pretend that he is enthusiastic about moving to Cretea to set a good example for his people, but Miryam can tell that losing Erithia is tearing him apart. That is definitely her fault in a way, just as the fact that his right arm still hurts and none of the healers they talked to has been able to do anything about it is because of her. (Well, the blame for that last thing lies with Daín for the most part, but he had the good sense to stay away so far. Miryam is sure that will change soon enough, though, given what she knows about him.)

Drakon and her settle into a rhythm of sorts together. During the days, they pretend everything is fine. At nights, when they are alone in their tent, they allow themselves to mourn, to be scared and in pain. It probably isn’t ideal, but Miryam supposes they will have all the time in the world to deal with what they lost once everyone is safe and settled on Cretea.

----

Miryam is asleep in their tent, or at least pretending to be, but Drakon gave up on trying to sleep after having spent two hours tossing and turning on his mattress. His right arm still hurts, pain shooting up from the fingertips to the shoulder at any movement, which makes sleeping difficult.

Instead, he leaves the camp, nodding to the guards as he passes them, and sits down on a flat stone by the shore still within the wards Miryam set up around the camp. Tiny waves are lapping around his feet. Drakon picks up a handful of pebbles and starts tossing them into the water, sending ripples running over the surface.

He is just about to pick up a second hand of stones when a reflection appears in the water. He looks up and finds a dark-haired man with dark skin and blue robes floating above the water. So he did come, just as Miryam predicted.

“Ghost,” he says, only to remember a heartbeat later that the being in front of him is called Daín.

“Hello Drakon,” Ghost – no, Daín, remember it already – says quietly.

He doesn’t say anything after that, and Drakon only stares at him. Miryam told him about what happened after he resurrected her, but he still cannot quite believe that the man before her is the second-most important being in his religion. (Although given that his goddess apparently wants him dead, he might want to reconsider his religion as well. There are many things he needs to reconsider, it seems.)

“How… how are you doing?” Daín finally asks.

“Good,” Drakon says in a too-casual tone. “Thanks for asking. You might want to avoid Miryam for the time being, though. She’s furious with you.”

“Miryam, huh?” Daín asks. “And you?”

Drakon shrugs with his good shoulder. “My arm still hurts.” Understatement of the century. “I can barely hold a pen. How do you think I am feeling?”

Daín’s form dims slightly. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That’s what I actually came to tell you. I didn’t mean…” He breaks off, then starts again. “I regretted it the moment I did it.”

“Why did you do it, then?” Drakon asks.

That’s what has been bugging him ever since. Admittedly, he isn’t the best at judging people, but he still thought he could trust Ghost. They weren’t exactly friends, but he still thought they liked each other. That he was apparently so wrong stings.

“Because I couldn’t spend the rest of eternity stuck in that cave,” Daín says, voice rising slightly. “I just couldn’t.”

“But we had promised to get you out,” Drakon says. He doesn’t like how small his voice sounds. This would probably be easier if he was angry.

“And how would you have done that, with Miryam dead?” Daín shakes his head. “Any possible way to ever free me – be it in combination with resurrecting Miryam or just cutting me loose – involved you using the sword. I didn’t want this, I swear I didn’t, but it was my only chance.”

“Ah,” Drakon says, nodding slowly.

He hadn’t considered that. It makes sense, though, and it being the reason for why Daín did what he did is actually a relief. It means that Daín didn’t hate him, didn’t fake friendliness to manipulate him into freeing him from the beginning – Drakon didn’t misjudge him that badly, after all – he just wanted to get out of the cave. After eight thousand years of being trapped there alone, it is certainly something Drakon can sympathize with. He doesn’t exactly approve (his arm hurts too much for that), but he has a hard time blaming Daín.

“And you…” Daín continues, “you wanted to save Miryam so badly. Initially, I wasn’t going to help you, but you practically begged me and so – “

“And so you thought it was fine to lie to me?” Drakon asks, annoyed again. He understands why Daín didn’t give him the choice, but there’s really no reason for Daín to act like he was doing him a favour, or like he was justified in taking away his choice on the matter. “If you were so sure I would do it anyways, you could have just told me the truth.”

“I – “ Daín begins, but he is cut off by a voice from behind.

“Are you actually apologizing because you feel bad, or just because your little plan to free yourself didn’t go quite as planned and you need me to not hate you, Daín?”

Drakon turns around to Miryam who is leaning against a tree behind him, arms crossed so tightly she looks like she is moments away from accidentally snapping them.

“Can’t sleep?” Drakon asks by way of greeting and moves aside a bit on his stone to make space for her.

“As usual.” Miryam pushes off her tree and goes to sit next to him. Arms still crossed, she turns to glare at Daín. “Still waiting for your answer.”

Daín still seems to be processing what Miryam just said to him. He is hanging entirely still in the air, not even blinking. At Miryam’s words, he snaps out of it, though.

“I really do want to apologize,” he says. “I would have come even if I had been freed fully, instead of just being tied to you instead of the sword. And I would still want you to not hate me even if I was able to move more than a mile away from you at a time.”

Miryam snorts. “Yeah, it must be terribly inconvenient. All that work to get free, only to end up tied to one of the people you betrayed to get what you want.”

She is very good at only letting anger and coldness show right now, but Drakon knows that she was as hurt by Daín’s betrayal as he was, and that she isn’t pleased at all by having him bound to her now. Under different circumstances, Drakon thinks she might have decided to be more charitable about the entire situation and give Daín a second chance, but it seems she decided to be angry for both of them about Daín nearly getting him killed.

“Besides,” Miryam continues, “your apologies hardly undo what you did.”

Now, Drakon does feel the need to interject. He is almost beginning to feel bad for Daín.

“It was nice of him to explain, though,” Drakon says. “I can’t even blame him, honestly.”

Miryam twists around to face him, looking outraged. “What?” She asks. “You can’t be serious.”

Drakon shrugs. “He wanted a way out of that cave. I understand that. And if I had just let him out earlier instead of leaving him trapped there all alone just because I was scared to break tradition, none of this would have happened, so at least part of the blame for the entire situation lies with me.”

“Using the sword would still have killed you, though!” Miryam is clearly trying to keep her voice calm, but she doesn’t succeed entirely. “That was his plan from the beginning. How can you just be willing to overlook that?”

In spite of himself, Drakon finds himself smiling. It has been an ongoing discussion between the two of them in the last weeks which one of them is putting to little importance into their own wellbeing. Drakon feels that Miryam is brushing off the fact that she died and the related trauma too easily and also spends far too much time blaming herself and too little blaming others for everything that happened. In turn, Miryam thinks that Drakon should focus less on her and more on how he almost died and also lost his home.

In the end, they are probably both right. It seems that they are both painfully alike in that they never quite manage to place enough importance on their own lives.

“That wasn’t my plan at all,” Daín objects, making Drakon turn to face him again. “I didn’t want to hurt Drakon, that’s why I stopped suggesting he use the sword after a while!”

Miryam looks like she already has a reply ready for that, but Drakon cuts in before she gets the chance. “I think we aren’t going to solve this today,” he says. “What I’d like to know, though, is how you ended up in that cave. The true story. And how you know the Mo… Étain.”

That stops Miryam from saying whatever was just on her mind. She has been dying to know the details of Daín’s and Étaín’s past, and she evidently cares more about that than about telling Daín off yet again.

“Alright,” Daín says. He seems relieved at the chance to change the subject. “Then let’s start at the beginning. From my understanding, it is Fae belief that I am a Fae who was chosen as a consort by Étaín, who is the goddess who created this world.”

Drakon nods, internally bracing himself. He has a feeling he isn’t going to like whatever is coming next. He was never go-to-the-temple-daily religious, but he did care about it. The years of war didn’t exactly improve his relationship with his goddess, but he can’t shake the feeling that this will be worse still.

“The Fae, as usual, were wrong on both counts,” Daín says. “Étaín and I are both members of a species called Aín. We are born from the universe itself, made from the strings that make up its essence and have powers that are – although any Aín I can think of would consider the comparison an insult – similar to the powers witches exhibit. Although the more correct way to put it considering the history would be that the witches have powers that are a faint echo of ours.”

“Sounds pretty god-like to me,” Drakon mutters.

“That’s an interesting question, isn’t it?” Daín asks, perking up. “What is a god?” He seems genuinely excited at the question. “You see, there is no clear answer. If we define it as a ‘being of great power that is worshipped as a deity’, one might consider Miryam to be a goddess, provided she got herself some worshipers, and – “

“Can we get back to the subject at hand?” Miryam asks sharply. Drakon cannot tell if she is just annoyed with Daín in general, wants him to continue his story, or doesn’t like the goddess-comparison. Probably a mixture of all three.

Daín winces. “Sure. Anyways, long story short, Étaín grew tired of simply visiting worlds and watching life there as a spectator. She wanted… well, I suppose that no longer matters. She took over one of the worlds – this one – and began to shape it to her liking, using the Cauldron, a magical item she created, to anchor the spell she used. She never particularly cared about the world’s original inhabitants – the humans, as I am sure you already guessed – but there was a bunch of invaders from another world – the Fae – who were all too happy to worship her as a goddess when she had prepared this world so well for them. And Étaín quickly found that she enjoyed being worshipped as a goddess.”

Drakon groans and buries his face in his hands. He prepared himself for the worst, but this is worse than anything he considered possible. His ancestors were invaders who stole this world from the humans and then proceeded to enslave him, his goddess the one who helped them, and –

“And what was your role in all this?” Miryam asks.

“I was her best friend,” Daín says without looking at Miryam. “And then I was her lover and her husband.”

“So you helped her.” Miryam has her arms crossed again and seems to be growing increasingly angry as the conversation progresses.

“No. But I didn’t stop her either, and that’s almost as bad.” Daín sighs. “It took me far too long to realize that she was wrong, and to start acting against her. I only changed my mind when I met Rashida. But from then on, I worked with the humans against Étaín. Well, mostly against the Fae, but Étaín backed them, so it made little difference. I managed to keep it secret for centuries, but she found out eventually. When she did, we fought. And we hurt each other badly enough that we were both reduced to this.” He gestures at himself. “Powerless. Mere shades of what we once were, forced to remain stuck in this world forever without ever having the power to influence it again.”

Drakon curses softly and runs a hand through his hair. Wonderful. So everything he believes was one giant lie. Well, not everything, of course, but still quite a lot. A lot of really important things.

Miryam nods slowly. “Interesting story. We’ll think about it.”

“There’s more still,” Daín says. “So much you do not know yet.”

“Maybe some other day,” Miryam says. “I’d rather be alone with Drakon now, though.”

Daín nods. “Of course. And I truly am sorry.”

Miryam doesn’t react. Drakon might have offered some acknowledgement, but he is still chewing on what Daín just told him. After waiting another heartbeat, Daín disappears into thin air.

Drakon turns to Miryam. His first instinct is to apologize, to offer some kind of comment about what Daín just revealed about his ancestors, but Miryam likely wouldn’t care about that. She didn’t the first time around, and she doubts he will now.

Miryam is the one who breaks the silence. “I can’t believe you are actually considering to forgive him,” she says, but she is smiling as she shakes her head slightly.

Ah. So this is what they are talking about. “And you?” Drakon asks. “Are you just going to hate him forever? Might be inconvenient, given that he is tied to you. He’ll have to be around a lot.”

Miryam laughs. “Unfortunate, isn’t it? I guess I’ll have to put that on the list of things I will eventually have to deal with. Sometime after we’ve made sure our people get through the next year without starving, I imagine.”

Drakon smiles back at her. “At least it won’t be boring?” He offers.

“Oh, definitely,” Miryam says and takes his hand. “At the rate things are going, we’ll be lucky if we ever get so much as a single boring day in our lives.”

“There’s a lot to be done until we get there, though,” Drakon says and jumps to his feet. “Houses to build and fields to plant. A country to create from scratch.” He offers her a hand to help her up.

Miryam takes the offered hand and lets him pull her to her feet. “Sounds fun. We better find a way to get everyone to Cretea safely first, though.”

----

Moving over to Cretea turns out to be less of a challenge than Miryam initially anticipated. Lacking ships and unable to purchase new ones for secrecy reasons, they had to rely on magic to get them across the ocean and onto the island. The entire matter (disabling the wards to even allow people onto the island and then creating a spell that allows about a million people to transfer to the island) took Miryam four days and no less than six trips to Cretea.

The spell she ended up with is hardly a work of art – it’s a one-way bridge of sorts between their camp and Cretea, and only ten people can pass through at a time and the transfer over to Cretea takes about thirty seconds, meaning that they need to have the spell running for well over a month to get everyone over to the island – but it is functional. A month is long, yes, it seems like a small price to pay for a relatively safe and comfortable way of travelling. Especially compared to what the millions of people on the Continent who also lost their homes have to deal with.

On the last day before the first people will start leaving for Cretea, Andromache visits again. Drakon is busy explaining the logistics of everything to the group of soldiers that will pass through the wall first, and so it’s just the two of them sitting together in Miryam’s tent.

“So, how are you doing?” Andromache asks.

Miryam shrugs. “Getting used to everything.” She doesn’t say that the nightmares are bad again, or that she feels so terribly guilty for all these people having to leave their homes, or that she is terrified of what the future might hold.

Andromache is kind enough to leave it at that and not call attention to her lie. “You’re leaving with the first group tomorrow?” She asks instead.

“Yes.” Miryam nods to the necklace Andromache is still wearing around her neck. “That will still bring you to me whenever you want. I’m hoping to see you again even when we’ve left the Continent.”

“I’ll come visit,” Andromache says with a sad smile.

Neither of them says that Andromache will have a very limited amount of time where she is even able to visit. The evacuations will probably take a few months still, but once the Wall goes up, there will be no more visits. Because there will be no more Andromache.

It is a subject both of them have carefully avoided in the last weeks. The knowledge that the wall spell will require the lives of the six human queens to come into function is always there, standing between them, but Miryam hasn’t yet found the courage to address it and Andromache doesn’t seem interested in bringing it up either.

Miryam reaches into her jacket and pulls out a second necklace. “And it would be great if you could give this to Mor. Tell her that I’d like to see her again sometime.”

Andromache frowns at the necklace in Miryam’s hand, then reluctantly takes it. “Is this your way of making me talk to Mor again?”

“This is my way of making sure a friend of mine doesn’t spend the rest of her life blaming herself for my death, and of possibly clearing up our argument,” Miryam replies. “Although I do wish you two would talk things out.”

Andromache makes a face at Miryam. “I don’t.”

“It was just an argument, Andromache. And it was halfway my fault, anyways, for not warning Mor of what I was going to do. It’s really not worth breaking up over.”

And Miryam feels terrible that this argument led to two of her friends breaking up. She never wanted that to happen, and she doesn’t think Mor deserves it. What she has said hadn’t exactly been kind, but given what Miryam had done, it hadn’t been unwarranted, either. Miryam doesn’t regret her actions, but she also cannot blame anyone for hating her for them.

“Well, it’s not your relationship so you don’t get to decide that,” Andromache mutters. When Miryam just watches her in silence, she sighs. “Besides, I’m not breaking up with Mor over the argument the two of you had. I’m breaking up with her because of the general implications of her behaviour.”

“You don’t really think Mor is anything like Shey,” Miryam says.

“No. But I don’t think I can imagine a relationship with her either. Not anymore.” Andromache shrugs. “I mean, even if I wasn’t going to die in that spell, I think it would be better for things to end here. Especially with the wall soon going up, there is little point in investing in a relationship I am unsure about.”

“Either way, you should talk to her sometime,” Miryam says. “You won’t get many chances to clear things between you up anymore, and such things shouldn’t be put off too long.” She thinks of Jurian and all the things she never got the chance to say to him and adds, “Talking from experience.”

Andromache sighs and closes her hand around the necklace. “I’ll give it to Mor,” she says. “And I’ll see. About the conversation.”

Miryam nods. “That’s all I am asking.”

----

Almost two weeks after Miryam gave it to her, Andromache still carries the charmed necklace she was meant to give to Mor around with her. She intended to give it to Mor right away, but somehow, the opportunity never arose. With the entire Continent dissolved into complete chaos, refugee trails running from one side to the other, she simply didn’t have much time for private conversations. Besides, Mor wasn’t in Telique as much as before, meaning they rarely saw each other either way.

Alright. If Andromache is being entirely honest, she didn’t exactly put much effort into meeting her, either. She could easily have sent a letter and asked Mor to come visit, but the truth is that she simply doesn’t want to talk to her. Having a few weeks to think everything through helped calm her anger into a manageable extent – which was, of course, helped by the fact that Miryam and Drakon turned out to be alive and… well, not quite well, but well enough, she suppoes – but that still doesn’t mean she’s just going to forgive Mor. Not for her behaviour and not for the mindset behind it.

Talking to Mor now would mean having to deal with that, and she simply doesn’t have the energy to explain to her where her problem is. If Mor doesn’t figure it out herself, it’s hardly up to Andromache to help her.

She promised Miryam, though. And Miryam also has a point that some things ought to be settled in due time. So as the date when the wall is scheduled to go up (which will, as it happens, also mean Andromache’s death), she finally makes herself approach Mor after a meeting in Telique.

“We need to talk,” she says by way of greeting, making Mor spin around to her, the papers she was just studying forgotten. Before she can say anything else, Andromache adds, “Meet me in half an hour in our usual spot.”

With that, she turns around and stalks off.

Their usual spot is one of the palace’s private gardens, this one belonging traditionally to Angolere. Usually, it is visited by courtiers from her country, but with everyone so busy lately, it is entirely empty when Andromache arrives. She still walks around once to check, then sits down on a bench under a willow and waits.

Mor arrives five minutes later. She is clearly nervous, fiddling around with the sleeve of her dress as she walks. Andromache nods to the seat beside her and waits until Mor has put up a ward around them before pulling the necklace out of her pocket and holding it out to her.

The explanation she offers is quick and hard. She only offers the bare bones of the situation. Miryam, Drakon and the others are alive, they are hiding, Miryam wants Mor to visit. She does not mention Shey, or the fact that Miryam died. If Mor wants to know about these things, she will have to speak to Miryam about it.

Halfway through her explanations, Mor begins to cry. Andromache does not put an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. Part of her wants to, but that would send a signal to Mor she doesn’t want to send, and so she simply finishes her explanation and then waits for Mor to stop crying.

Maybe it was wrong of her to wait this long before giving the news to Mor. Letting her go on for weeks still thinking Miryam, Drakon and the others are dead was cruel, perhaps. Did she truly do it because she did not want to speak to Mor, or was it some sort of punishment? It bothers Andromache that she cannot tell and she vows to herself to do better. She once loved Mor dearly – for all that she made mistakes, she does not deserve cruelty, or punishment.

“So things between us…” Mor begins, hesitantly. “Things are fine again? We’re good.”

Andromache’s initial reaction is to snap at her, but she promised herself to be kind about this from now on, if only to make up for not delivering Miryam’s message earlier. This is, although Mor doesn’t yet know it, their final conversation. And Andromache wants a neat resolution to this, one that will leave her knowing she did everything right. She doesn’t want to be angry with Mor anymore. She just wants this settled and then she wants to move on.

“No,” she says as gently as she can manage. “I never blamed you for Miryam’s death, and so her not being dead changes nothing at all.” Mor looks completely crestfallen. She doesn’t say anything else, so it’s up to Andromache to say the final words. “Things between us are over, Mor.”

She doesn’t say that she is sorry. This conversation is already more for Mor’s sake than for hers, but there are limits to how far she will go. Maybe if Mor hadn’t thought that the sole problem was Miryam’s death, she might have been kinder.

Mor is crying again.

Andromache sighs. Still, she doesn’t reach out to comfort her. “With the wall soon going up, we wouldn’t have much of a future either way,” she says. “The Night Court and Angolere will be on different sides of the wall, with no way across.”

It isn’t the reason for why she is ending the relationship, but it might soften the blow for Mor. Let her think that the wall influenced her decision, that they might still have had a chance without it.

“I could stay in Angolere with you,” Mor sniffs.

“And leave your family behind forever? That’s not a choice I’d want you to make. Especially not over a relationship I am no longer sure about.”

She is far more than “no longer sure”, but there’s no need to say that. If not for the wall, if not for Andromache’s upcoming death, there might be some way to salvage their relationship, but Andromache doesn’t think she would be willing to make the effort. She certainly wouldn’t want Mor to make a choice as permanent as leaving her home behind for her now.

It does not make Mor cry any less, though. Andromache wishes she would stop crying long enough to think about her words and realize she is right. There’s no way Mor would want to leave her family and friends behind, not even for Andromache. But well, maybe she has a right to her tears and this is just Andromache being impatient with her. Looking at it objectively, it is probably her who is being too cold about this while Mor’s reaction is appropriate to the situation.

“Not all endings have to be bad,” Andromache offers. “I know it sometimes feels that way, but a relationship ending isn’t the end of the world. It just happens sometimes, and sometimes, it is even for the best. At times, two people are just right for each other for a time, and then they aren’t anymore, but that doesn’t mean the time before was bad or didn’t bring anything to both of them.”

That was very, very kind of her, Andromache thinks. Miryam will be satisfied. A bit cold, perhaps, but she just can’t help it. She is done with this relationship and, harsh though it may sound, done with Mor. She believes what she said – for a time, their relationship was good and she will always be grateful for that. But she sees no cause to maintain any kind of relationship with Mor after this.

“But I don’t want to go on without you,” Mor whispers.

Is it too cold if Andromache tells her that she will get over it in time? At least that’s the experience Andromache made in her two previous relationships. (Well, the first of these relationships barely lasted more than a month, but that didn’t make Andromache at eighteen feel less like she was dying when her then-boyfriend broke up with her.) On the other hand, that is probably not what Mor wants to hear right now, and given that this is her first relationship, it might be best if she makes these experiences on her own.

“You’ll manage,” she says. “I was the first person you loved – I doubt I’ll be the last.” For the sake of the good years they had, she makes herself smile. “I was happy to have met you, Morrigan. I wish you a long and happy life.” It is true, too.

Mor is crying harder again and doesn’t seem capable of saying anything, but that’s alright. Andromache would have appreciated some kind parting words from her, but she doesn’t need them. She is perfectly at peace with the way their relationship ended – this meeting’s intention was to give Mor a resolution, not her.

She gets up, inclines her head to Mor one last time, and walks out of the garden, leaving Mor alone on the bench.

----

On the Continent, the evacuations continue, the chaos showing no way of easing yet. By contrast, Prythian is almost eerily calm. The only court that is losing any territory is Spring, where everyone is busy moving hundreds and thousands of people, but up north in the Night Court, one might think there are no evacuations happening at all.

Mor enjoys the quiet. It offers a nice contrast to the storm raging inside her, and gives her all the time in the world to nurse her broken heart. After that terrible last conversation with Andromache, she fled to the cabin in the mountains where Rhysand is still recovering – or, lately, quietly seething at the fact that his father forbid him from going after Amarantha on his own – and together, they spend days in solitude.

They are a good fit these days, both of them equally miserable. For the most part, they do not talk at all. Rhysand wants to be left alone with his rage, and Mor doesn’t feel like talking about what happened with Andromache either. Well, she wouldn’t have felt like it even if Rhys had known about their relationship in the first place.

As far as she can tell, Rhys believes she is mourning Miryam and Drakon. About them, they talk once or twice, but Mor usually blocks off the conversation. She loves Rhys, but she isn’t prepared to talk about Miryam yet. Not when Miryam and their last argument are so closely tied to everything that is now wrong with her life.

Some days, she sits outside in the cold and twists the necklace in her hands. She hasn’t found the courage to actually use it yet. If Miryam wanted Mor to get it, that likely means she wants to talk to her, but what would they even talk about?

Nothing Mor might say would change anything about the facts. It won’t undo what Miryam did in the Black Land, or the argument they had about it. Nor will it erase the fact that Mor promised to protect Miryam, and then she left, and then Miryam almost died. It won’t make Andromache want her back, either.

Mor is sitting outside with the necklace again one day when Rhys sits down next to her. “What is the business with that necklace?” He asks. “A gift from a lover who left you?”

“No,” Mor chokes out. And then, before she can think any better of it, she is telling him the truth. Not everything – not a word about Andromache – but she tells him what the necklace is, what it does. She wants to mention her argument with Miryam, but every time she tries to repeat what happened, her voice abandons her.

After she is done, Rhys is silent for a while. Finally, he says, “I’m not sure if you should visit them. It would be a risk.”

“How so?” Mor asks, perking up.

“Well, if Miryam and Drakon wish for people to think they are dead, you visiting them would only put that in danger, wouldn’t it? What if father notices that you are gone and starts asking where you were?”

Mor flinches. She didn’t consider that option yet, but he is right. It would be irresponsible to visit Miryam. Even if Miryam asked for it, Mor shouldn’t… At least not right now. Maybe in a few months, once everything has settled down and she isn’t watched this closely by her uncle anymore. Maybe by then, things will have calmed down all on their own, too. Sometimes, time is the best medicine.

Yes, Mor thinks. This is right. Soon enough, things will have calmed down and it will have stopped hurting and then, she will be able to talk to Miryam again, too. It will all be alright. It just takes a little time.

----

The next two months are so busy that the time seems to move at twice the normal speed. That it takes over a month to move everyone to Cretea seemed inconvenient at first, but having people appear one after the other on Cretea actually turns out to be a blessing. That way, the first people to arrive can already start setting up a camp, scout the terrain and look for food. All of this is be painfully necessary because Cretea, densely forested and full of unknown plants and animals as it is, it definitely not an island you just want to dump a million of people onto without preparation.

By the time the last of their people arrives and Miryam closes her bridge spell, they have not one but actually five separate camps, all within less than an hour of each other, to avoid people being too densely crowded in one area and polluting the water. They also have some makeshift huts erected and catalogued most of the common fauna and flora as well as mapped the nearby parts of the island. The cartographers and scouts especially have done great work, but everyone on Cretea did their part.

Loathe as Miryam is to admit it, though, everything would have been a whole lot more difficult if not for Daín’s help. Within a day of the first people arriving on Cretea, they realized that the island is completely different from the rest of the Continent. More than half of the local plants and animals are unknown even to their experts, and it is impossible to tell which ones are dangerous. (For example, who would have thought that the tiny elephants living in the jungle can spit poison if they feel threatened?)

Daín, having apparently been the one to create Cretea as a wedding gift to Étaín, knows all the local specialities, though, and he is willing to help, which forces Miryam to put her lingering anger with him aside for the moment. To his credit, he doesn’t tie his help to any demands, doesn’t even ask Miryam and Drakon to forgive him for what he did in exchange. Drakon still seems to forgive him, even though his arm still hasn’t gotten better. Miryam doesn’t feel inclined to do the same yet.

Busy as they all are with trying to settle into Cretea and not be killed by the wildlife, she barely notices how the time passes. It’s like she blinked and suddenly, more than two months have passed since that battle on the ocean floor. On the Continent, the evacuations are drawing to a close. Not everyone is settled in yet, of course, and on the Fae side of the Continent, it is already obvious that there will be struggles over borders still to come, but everyone has reached their side of the Continent by now. Which means the wall will go up soon.

The realization hits Miryam like a punch to the chest when Andromache calmly tells her that they will cast the wall spell in less than a week. Before she even had the chance to truly comprehend what is about to happen, it’s Andromache’s last visit and they are forced to say goodbye to each other.

Andromache seems entirely calm about the situation, which just makes it more difficult for Miryam. Words rarely fail her, but now, they do. Andromache is one of her closest friends – the idea of losing her like this is unbearable. It almost feels like Miryam is killing her herself.

Andromache seems to guess her line of thought, though, because as she hugs Miryam goodbye, she whispers into her ear, “I know you like to blame yourself for things that aren’t your fault, and that you won’t listen to me when I tell you that you hold no blame for a decision I made freely. I still want you to not blame yourself for this, though. Consider it my last wish if you want.”

Miryam isn’t sure if that is a wish she will be able to honour, but she still makes herself nod. After Andromache has disappeared, she spends a long time staring at the space where she was just standing, trying not to think about anything at all. Then, she turns around and walks over to the nearest human camp.

It is perched in a valley, and Miryam finds a flat stone on a nearby hill where she sits down. From up here, she can see the entire camp, all the people moving round down there, going about their daily activities and simply living. Children are running through the camp, chasing each other in some made-up game. Fires are burning everywhere, adults preparing dinner over them.

Miryam smiles softly. Maybe in a moment, she will go down there and join the hustle, maybe find herself some dinner and join the groups of people sitting around in front of the tents. For the moment, though, she is content to simply watch.

She loves moments like this. They remind her that even if many things didn’t go the way she planned, at the end of the day, she got the most important thing she wanted, the only one that really mattered. At the end of the day, they won and they are free, and that’s all that really counts.

She just wishes Jurian was here to see this. He would have loved it as much as she does and it is so beyond cruel that he never got to see that the victory he sacrificed so much for.

“I miss you,” she whispers.

She doesn’t believe that anyone is there to listen, doesn’t even believe in an afterlife, but some things are better said out loud. For some words, it is easier to be able to pretend that there is someone listening.

“I wonder what you would make of everything if you were here.” She smiles, shaking her head slightly. “You would probably be against the wall far less than I am. You would think I’m stupid to dislike it so much, I know. We might even argue over it. I would give anything to be able to argue with you over that one more time. But mostly I just… I really wish you were here to see this. We won. And it kills me that you never got to hear about that.”

The only answer is the wind rustling in the leaves. What wouldn’t Miryam give for one chance, just once more chance to talk to Jurian. How is it that she got a second chance at life but he didn’t?

She tries to comfort herself with the knowledge that Jurian would be happy for her. If he was able to talk to her, he would probably tell her off for feeling guilty that she lives while he is gone. He would want her to live a happy life, the same thing she would have wanted for him had their positions been reversed.

“We won,” Miryam repeats once more, and then, she gets up and walks down to the camp.

----

The sunlight pierces the darkness without warning. Had Jurian been able to, he would have closed his eye against the sudden light, but as it is, he can only wait until his eye adjusts to the brightness and he can see again. Slowly, Amarantha’s face comes into focus in front of him.

“Have you missed me?” She asks.

Even if Jurian had been able to reply, he wouldn’t have. He didn’t miss Amarantha, of course, but after so long trapped alone in the dark, even the face he hates the most in the entire world is a welcome sight. He doesn’t know how long it has been since Amarantha shoved his eye into that casket, furious over the Loyalists’ defeat and clearly trying to sour the victory for Jurian, only that it felt like an eternity trapped alone in the dark, moments blurring together in a never-ending stream of terribleness.

“It’s been almost three months,” Amarantha says as if reading his thoughts and picks the ring with his eye on it up.

“Such a long time!” She seems in a good mood today, and Jurian is immediately suspicious. Her good news tend to end badly for him. “There is so much you missed. Do you want me to tell you?”

Yes. No. Jurian doesn’t know. If he still had a body, he is sure his heart would be racing. Any news that has Amarantha in such a good mood can only be terrible indeed, especially when it must be bad enough to counter her anger over the Alliance winning the war.

“Well, one thing you certainly didn’t miss was your allies looking for you,” Amarantha says casually. “Because they didn’t. They seem entirely content to leave you to rot. If you ask me, they are probably glad to be rid of you. Not that I can blame them.”

Once, Jurian might have objected – internally, at least – but now, he cannot. He has run out of possible explanations for why none of his friends came to save him yet, especially with the war now over for months. They should have come. But they didn’t, and the only possible reason is that they do not care.

“No, there was something else I wanted to tell you about,” Amarantha says. “I even considered interrupting your little time-out for it, but I thought you could use some time on your own to contemplate how little use your side winning this war was for you in the end.”

Desperately, Jurian tries to cling onto the knowledge that this war was still worth it. If they won, that must mean slavery was abolished. Millions of people must have been freed. It was worth it.

It is difficult to truly feel that way, though, when he cannot see the effects. All that’s there for him is pain and suffering, and none of his supposed friends seem to be willing to help him. It’s like they won and then forgot about him, like they had no use for him anymore and so they threw him away.

“Well, now you hear a few months too late,” Amarantha continues. She smiles at him. It is not a pleasant smile, showing far too many teeth. “Your little mortal lover – sorry, former lover – is dead.”

Jurian’s world goes entirely still. It’s a lie, is his first thought. It has to be a lie. A poor one at that, given that he knows the war is already over. Miryam cannot be dead.

“That lesser faery she betrayed you with is dead as well, although I doubt you are sad about that,” Amarantha continues. “As well as a whole bunch of other people, mortals and faeries, mostly. Ravenia sent soldiers after them, and they somehow managed to completely wipe each other out. Everyone dead, on both sides.” Her smile broadens further. “I find it beyond amusing, honestly. Although I would be really curious to know what you think about it.”

What he thinks about it? He thinks, of course, that it cannot be true. And if it was… No, he cannot bear to think about that.

“She betrayed you, after all,” Amarantha continues. “You did everything for her, and she couldn’t even be bothered to try and save you. Maybe she was too busy with that faerie prince she picked over you. Maybe she was glad to have you out of the way.”

Jurian wishes he could block out her words. He doesn’t want to hear what she is saying, but he can’t stop it. The words are like poison, all the deadlier because there is at least a spark of truth in them.

Amarantha shrugs. “If I were you, I would probably hate her. I’d be glad that she is dead.”

Jurian isn’t. He isn’t. He could never hate Miryam, could never want her dead.

But she must have hated him and wanted him dead if she never came for him. He tries to tell himself that she simply might not have had the time, that she might have come for him after she freed her people had she survived to do so, but it isn’t a good enough excuse. Had it been Miryam being tortured, he would have dropped anything to try and save her. Nothing, absolutely nothing could have been more important.

And she left him for Drakon, Drakon who wouldn’t even try to save her when she was in danger. Jurian told her to stay away from him, but she didn’t listen, and what did it get her? It’s her own damn fault if she died.

No, no, he doesn’t mean that. What is he thinking?

Amarantha smiles like he knows exactly what is going on in his head. “You are glad,” she says, and Jurian spends the entire rest of the day forcing himself to relive all the good memories he has of Miryam to prove to himself, to Amarantha, to everyone, how very much not glad he is.

----

Given that Andromache is going to die in less than half a day, she is surprisingly calm. She spent the last days settling all the needs to be settled. She visited her mother and all her remaining family, met up with any close friends and wrote a few letters that are meant to be opened only after her death. Most of the meetings went well. Her mother didn’t want to let her go at the end, hugging her again and again which just made it harder for Andromache to leave, but at the end of the day, she feels that all of the meetings were a success.

Her people are not yet entirely settled in, but her successor will see to that. Everyone will be provided for, and Andromache is sure that Ania is a good choice as a successor, someone who will govern fairly and wisely for the years to come. Everything is settled. She isn’t leaving any loose ends behind.

With only five hours to spare before she wants to meet the other queens, though, she suddenly finds herself with nothing left to do. Everything is settled, but Andromache still feels like she needs act, to somehow do one last thing even if she doesn’t know what. Her hours are so limited now, she can’t help the feeling that she ought to be using them to their fullest extent.

Yanis eventually finds her wandering through the palace aimlessly. He doesn’t say a word, just takes her by the arm and leads her to one of the gardens. They sit down amongst two rose bushes. With autumn approaching, the flowers are raining petals on the pathway. With a start, Andromache realizes that she will never see roses in full bloom again.

She swallows against the sudden tightness in her throat. In all the last months, she avoided thinking about all that dying entails. She thought about the fact that she has to die plenty, of course, but she never really allowed herself to contemplate what that means. And there were a million different things to consider, her people and the evacuations and the final council meetings keeping her so busy that she simply didn’t have time to think about it.

Now she does, though, and she doesn’t like it at all. Like most people in the world, Andromache doesn’t want to die. There are so many things she still wants to do. She would like to see Angolere rebuilt south of the wall, and see her people thrive. Should it ever become possible, she would like children of her own, and a partner to grow old with should she find someone she can imagine spending her life with. She once thought it might be Mor, but it wasn’t, and she would have liked to have the time to find someone else.

Maybe she should have asked Miryam what dying feels like. But no, that would just have made Miryam feel worse about the entire situation. Besides, she doubts bleeding out from a spear to the chest feels anything like being consumed by a spell.

She supposes at least she get to see another sunrise, as they chose dawn as the time to cast their spell. Hopefully, the morning won’t be cloudy so she will get to see the sun one last time.

Slowly, Yanis takes her hand. His rough, callused fingers squeeze hers.

“Remember our first mission, when we were rooky soldiers together?” He asks.

“When we were sent out to chase that band or faeries that had attacked the village?” Andromache asks, a smile tugging at her lips. “And you idiot thought you could get into a fistfight with one of these lion-wolf-mixture things and win?”

“It knocked my sword out of my hand!” Yanis objects. “I was panicking.”

“Lucky for you I still had both my sword and my senses, or that thing would have taken your head off.”

Yanis grins, but his smile soon fades. “Anni, I – “

A messenger bursts into the garden, nearly stumbling over his feet in his haste to bow to Andromache. “Your Majesty,” he says, holding out a letter to her. “From Queen Nakia. She said to deliver this to you.”

Frowning, Andromache takes the letter. She sees no reason why Nakia would write her a letter now, not when they are both going to die together in a few hours. She breaks the seal and unfolds the parchment.

Dear Andromache,

If all goes according to the plan, this letter will be delivered to you by midnight, which means that by then, it will be too late for you to change anything about any of it. I apologize for lying to you, but I didn’t think you would agree with my plan, and I had to do what I thought best for our people. I hope that you will be able to forgive my ploys.

For all that I believe we have all chosen worthy successors, it would be irresponsible to leave our people without any experienced leaders in a time like this. We couldn’t all die, and I trust that you and the others who remain will keep our people safe and lead them into a bright future.

It has been my honour to work with you in the last nine years.

Your friend,

Nakia

----

Queen Nakia of Scythia considers herself a practical woman. As such, it became clear to her quickly that robbing the humans of their entire leadership in one go would be a very, very bad idea. Admittedly, it was her bad idea, and at the time where she suggested it, it might not have been so bad at all, but now, there is simply no way sacrificing all six queens in one go is the right thing to do. Not when it would bring instability to their people in a situation as precarious as this one.

Fortunately, Nakia listened closely when Miryam initially explained the spell to them all. Back then, she said that the spell would work not only for the people it was tied to, but also for any close relatives. Some reading in books stolen from abandoned Fae libraries confirmed quickly enough that any close relatives to the other queens would work just as well as sacrifices.

It was not difficult to find people willing to step in for the other queens. Andromache’s mother. Sehline’s older brother. Mije’s uncle. Kjani’s grandmother. Only for Leline, there was no one since her entire family had died two years ago during an attack, so she is in the forest where they met to cast the spell along with the others.

Some part of Nakia feels bad for going behind the other queens’ backs like this. They will not be grateful to her for sparing them at the expense of their loved ones, but she is not doing it for their sakes. No, glad as she is that Andromache and the others will get to live, she is doing this solely for her country.

As for herself… Well, she had plenty of relatives of her own she might have asked, but she didn’t. A child should not die for its mother, nor a grandchild for its grandmother, and while Elmira is still young and inexperienced, Andromache and the others will easily able to support her through the initial years queen, just as Nakia herself did for so many others.

She had a long life, and a good one. For forty years, she ruled her country, kept her people safe. She watched her children and grandchildren grow up. Now, she gets to die knowing that her people will be forever free from slavery, never forced to fear the Fae again.

It is good, she thinks as she sketches symbols she does not understand into the earth around her, following the instructions Miryam left closely. The moon is standing high above in the sky.

Nakia finishes the last symbol and turns to face the others. “Shall we?” She asks.

They all look back at her. Some are crying, others firm. They all nod, though.

Nakia turns to look up at the moon. Slowly, she begins to recite the spell, keeping her gaze fixed on the moon above. It is the last thing she sees.

----

Miryam isn’t sleeping. She is lying in bed fully clothed, head resting on Drakon’s shoulder and his arm wrapped around her. When she senses the magical tremor running through the air, she sits up bolt upright.

“What happened?” Drakon asks, sitting up as well.

Miryam shakes her head, gasping. She can still feel the magic thick in the air, pulsing like a second heartbeat. It is not a pleasant sensation. And there, miles and miles away, she can sense something else. A barrier running through the world, cleaving it in two.

“It’s too early,” she whispers, stretching out her senses to investigate that new barrier. It is too far away for her to get a proper read, though. “Andromache said dawn.”

“The wall?” Drakon asks, turning around to her.

“Yes,” Miryam says slowly. She swings her legs over the bed’s edge and walks towards the door to the tiny hut they are sleeping in. She looks outside over the sleeping camp, as if to assure herself that they are still there. “The wall is in place now.”

----

A/N: So, this is not the last chapter after all. There will still be an epilogue coming, set 10 years after the wall went up, to wrap up some loose strings and also just... generally end on a positive note. That is obviously hard to do in the direct aftermath of basically 7+ years of extremely traumatizing events, but I do want to give off a HOPEFUL expression of the future, so an epilogue it is.

Tags: @croissantcitysucks @femtopulsed @aileywrites

#NOT the last chapter after all. we'll have an epilogue still #but the last part of the main story #very excited for everyone's reactions #the epilogue will be happier i promise #before the wall #miryam #jurian #drakon

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kalyan-kawlyan · 3 years ago

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notes on my religion and divinity

i guess my religion to me is just kinda what i want it to be. i pick & choose and label it as hinduism, mostly because I grew up with it and sorta identify with it. say i’m cheating, pushing the vegetables to the side of the plate, etc. but i’m not living by rules written by some dude who was around a million years ago who claimed he saw “god” and that “god” told him to write what he did. people forget that drugs existed back then, we just didn’t know that drugs were drugs. i dont think anybody’s invented a widely appreciated religion (not a cult) in the past hundred years, but every 25 year-old white dude who’s ever seen the joe rogan podcast has apparently taken dmt and seen god. take from that what you will. my point is, i can celebrate my heritage without tying myself to a strict set of rules and practices which are probably far more problematic than i’ve been led to believe. i just really love the core of hinduism, or at least how i interpret it based on my experiences, what follows is that: divinity doesn’t obscure itself, its just hard to define what’s infinite. divinity isn’t gendered, divinity doesn’t have race, etc etc etc. yeah, it sounds straight off a bumper sticker on a beat up toyota but it’s true. we can’t pretend we know what divinity is, we know so little. we spend a finite amount of time on this earth, we go a finite number of places, we have a finite number of unique experiences, and we meet a finite number of people. everything about us is finite. who’re we to talk about the infinite? luckily, all of us are a little piece of that boundlessness. we’re all divine and have that in common with everyone and everything that’s ever been or ever will be. and the energy we put out into the divine is what the divine will present us with in return. we all offer what we do to whatever we believe in based on our circumstances, and that’s okay. just like how there isn’t one way to define divinity, there isn’t one way to serve it. its like what marx said, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (i know, i know, quoting marx and spouting a bunch of flowery shit describing a religion that isn’t primarily focused on how god hates your guts, tucker carlson has like a year of material off me). karma obviously isn’t a perfect science but even a clean conscience is an immeasurable reward. and despite having just described all living things as finite, in being divine, we’re all just a little infinite. whenever you were born, you came out the womb made up of fragments of everybody and everything that’s ever existed, debris of 14 trillion years. and that’s not a starry-eyed metaphor either, its just me trying to put the law of the conservation of mass poetically: matter cannot be created nor destroyed, it just changes forms. and so, eventually you’ll die like living things do, and people will weep about how you’re gone (hopefully?). but whether you’re decomposing in a box six feet under, in an urn sitting on a mantel, or frozen in a box at a secret facility in antarctica if you happen to be a rich pedophile, its all just matter at the end of the day. over the course of infinity we’ll all become part of something new, and that something new will become something new, and that something new will become something new ad infinitum (there’s that word again!). obviously the dramatized elements of rebirth you see in bollywood movies, where you suddenly start seeing flashbacks from your past life and stuff like that are a little unrealistic, but in the sense that we take on the knowledge from previous generations and contribute what we learn to the future, and that we’re physically composed of all the crap that’s ever been, we’re undoubtedly the products of rebirth. spirituality is a different thing for everybody, as it should be; we all need to find a way to make the world make sense, and that’s something we figure out on our own. we’ll all have to approach the horrors of existence alone at some point or another, and we all have to learn to make peace in whatever way works for us. for me, it comes down to just trying to make sure the good i do outweighs the bad. thats putting it simply, its either a lot harder than it sounds or i really really suck. but i try. and don’t get me wrong, there are for sure cultural aspects of hinduism that are important to me: i pray everyday, go to temple when i can, and i don’t eat meat (big part of this is environmental and health concerns and also i’m better than you and need to prove it). its not much, but i don’t think even all that is necessary by the god i believe in. i think they just want us to do what we can and what we feel is right, and as long as we do that, the world will keep doing that spinning thing it does. the choices that you make ripple across everything that is divine and your ripple will interact with all the other ripples people make every day, and eventually, your ripple will come back around, one way or another. its like waves in the ocean all crashing into each other until one sinks a boat, or the tide drags some poor guy to his death. or sometimes, a family has a fun day at the beach. the kids play in the waves and manage not to drown. i believe that we have that effect on one another on such an infinite scale precisely because, well, we’re all divine. i think you probably got that by now though.

#personal essay #desi

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rowanthestrange · 4 years ago

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Have you seen the new episode yet?

Yes!

I feel sorry for Chibs as it’s certainly not a bad episode all things considered, but has the problem of pretty much everything not quite hitting given everything in the interim. He has my sympathy. I imagine there has been a lot of loud swearing and staring at the ceiling in his household.

At the very least, I’m always a sucker for a new Dalek. And his strategy of getting around the Terry Nation Estate’s ‘use them every series or lose them’ rules about the Daleks by having them always at New Years but also forming a distinct but easily followable narrative between those episodes is something after my own heart. A very smart way of doing things.

And Ryan got a good long scene with the Doctor! Look, I take what I’m given.

No idea what John Bishop’ll do or be like or anything, but I was down on Bradley Walsh to begin with and Graham ended up my lovely eldest son, so I’m not judging a thing until I see it. And finish the whole series of it.

Gonna be real though, I thought if there was any new companion, we were getting the girl in Osaka who looked up at the spaceship...

What else might you want from me...hmm... oh meta.

‘The alien thing connecting into computers to control stuff’. Cyberium/Mastery. Along with the ‘how long has this been happening for’ thing in a soft way. Just running themes. I think it was an...interesting choice to have the mutants lose rather than win, which is sort of counter to what we’ll call ‘real world meta’, and therefore could potentially play into a theme where the Time Lords are the mutants who lose, etc. etc.

Ignorable, more personal, ‘Where the HELL have you been?!’ section, a question I don’t really answer, as you all should know I’m a Snufkin by now:

Because the special is so unfitting with our own 2020 in some respects (not the police stuff - that’s evergreen), it’s had the opposing effect I expected on a casual WIP I’ve been playing around with most of the year, where I actually feel like I may carry on looking at it, rather than it ending up in the ‘why bother’ pile I’d put it in. And he brushed against enough of my work that I think some people might actually still feel it worthwhile even if not canon. I can certainly slot some bits in pretty perfectly.

No promises though. Writing requires a certain section of my brain to play ball which happens now and again at the moment, but the much rarer ability is where I can take a long thing and put it together with ma brain damage affecting my memory of the sections I’m supposed to order. (I often wish I had some sort of free Patreon-like system where interested parties could read through the probably hundreds of thousands of words of partial work I’ve accumulated and put aside for various reasons. Might genuinely hire an editor one day tbh cus there’s so much 90% done work that y’all could be enjoying.)

In my time away - which will continue by the way, sorry - I came up with what I think may be the answer to where we’re going-slash-have-gone with the Timeless Children/baby Doctor and Master/Cyberman/Frankenstein stuff. Or AN answer at any rate. But I only came to it when I was having an urge to write something completely non-canon for the hell of it following a Star Wars YouTube Documentary, but it does actually sort of work. I’ll explain it in fanfic form or else won’t explain it at all, because if I’m right it would be a waste not to do it in story form - either Chibs’s or mine.

And if you really are interested in my life stuff, EDS and Dysautonomia kicking my ass including my sight and hearing, and because I tend to get long chest infections with side effects that stick around for years (or forever), I’m just permanently indoors all the time. I don’t actually mind it. I’m that sort of autistic. I’ve got my partner and that’s all good and dandy. IT work was mostly remote anyway. I made a mask with dragons on it for going to blood tests etc. and was continuously appalled by the UK not giving a single shit about mask wearing until the ‘law’ and they still just take it off the second they leave the shops anyway so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I get to live inside for the foreseeable future. Especially if Johnson’s yahoo approach to making a half functioning vaccination cocktail ends up selecting for a Super Covid. But I got Crafts now man. It’s like my getting religion only I feel less guilt for screwing up. One day I’ll be back and you will see all the ridiculous stuff I’ve made. Like my Twelve and Bill cosplays (with hand embroidered patches on Bill’s jacket) for a pair of bears. But alas, that’s not today. Hope everyone is ok. And not changing their usernames without telling me. My lack of my reaching out is not a lack of caring. I just need a lot of spoons to carry conversation in any sense, and unfortunately I’m having to take more responsibility in my political garbage because everyone else is sodding off, and all that has me in a massive spoon deficit.

Eat good. Take vitamin tablets, D especially. Do exercise, even indoors for 10 minutes, and when you don’t want to. Make something every week, even if it’s just for you to see. And love, like, or at least tolerate yourself; don’t hate yourself, cus all this shit should have shown you by now there are waaaay more hateable people out there, droves of ‘em, and you don’t even rank, my friend.

(I’m still in my chrysalis of hibernation and am currently in a liquid state. I will emerge to interact fully with the world again, when I have coagulated into my moth form. This is a normal process, do not be concerned. Things sent to my inbox send emails that should reach my oozy form. Or may not. That’s tungl for you.)

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victorsandvanquishers · 4 years ago

Note

Body guard for Secre and Lumiere..., the reincarnation reunion we deserve.....

Bodyguard is probably the most popular prompt in my inbox, so I’ve decided to combine these two requests into one! Thank you to @icewitcher and anon for the requests!

The fic will include romantic!Secre/Lumiere and Parental!Secre and Asta, as well as background!AsuYuno and background!Charmy/Rill, all under the Bodyguard prompt. Happy reading, and don’t forget to watch Bodyguard, starring Kareena and Salman! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

~~~

Time moved differently with Secre Swallowtail. She hadn't physically aged after being cursed into a antibird, but once she'd regained her body, the crow's feet came as naturally as the longer hair. She still had the ability to transform into an antibird, and had, after retiring from the Black Bulls and leaving Clover Kingdom, chosen to remain a bird for small periods of time. It was easier to travel in her inhuman form. She could eat from the land, and contemplate in privacy.

There were downsides, of course. If she spent too long as an antibird, returning to her human form could mean spending a full day chopping off the overgrown locks, clipping her nails, and trimming the rest of her body hair. Even though she looked largely the same as she did six hundred years ago, the cells in her body continued to regenerate a bounty of beautiful black hair, and glowing skin.

But Secre disliked long hair, and she disliked pretending even more, so she chopped, clipped, and trimmed the years away.

She'd retired from the Black Bulls seven years after the invasion of the Spade Kingdom, and left Clover Kingdom after Asta died peacefully in his sleep at the tender age of ninety-four. The Spade boy he'd married decades earlier had passed away the year before, and Secre had known that it was only time before Asta went to sleep one night and didn't wake up again. The wails from his grown children began while Secre laid flowers on the ageless skull still standing on the outskirts of the village. She, of course, had known he'd passed the night before, but she didn't think it appropriate to wake the whole house at three in the morning just for that. Asta would have hated it.

He was laid to rest next to his husband, the Spade boy who never took up his princely crown, a boy who became a man, and then an old man who passed away from a heart attack in the middle of game of chess Asta was losing miserably.

Asta had cried about the boy being dramatic until the very end, and the wind spirit wept with him, wailing and begging for her Yuno to come back, to take the stinky shorty instead, and Asta cried with her because the Spade boy had meant everything to them, had meant everything to Asta.

She left identical white flowers on all three graves before she flew away – the bleached skull that still stood sentry after all these centuries, and the two graves of the two orphans who went on to become the greatest leaders Clover Kingdom had ever seen.

In a way, Lumiere hadn't been wrong. The world was cruel, even unbearable at times, but it still had its merits.

She met new people along the way, ones who sometimes asked too many questions, and some who didn't even say hello, merely passed her a plate of food and turned their attention back to their book, their own food, and once, a window looking out towards a bleached sky and golden fields. It was the kind of peace Secre hadn't ever experienced before, the peace of anonymity, of mutual respect for life, of living and letting live.

With Asta, there had never been a moment of silence. Secre was an observer more than she was a participant. Zagred had thought her foolish for that, and had been sealed away for his arrogance. She was a watcher, a recorder, someone who existed on the fringes of a memory that had long since faded away.

She was a hateful woman, too. No god of any religion would ever forgive her for making the decision to use a poor, magicless child for her own ends. She'd manipulated his despair and his longing, and she'd used it to her advantage. She'd used Asta – and she'd paid for it by losing Lumiere forever.

Secre had made many mistakes in her life, but never one as egregious as that one. That's why she had to atone – that's why she had to stay by his side until he'd perished peacefully.

She still bled, even if the blood was viscous black instead of smooth red. Lumiere had forgiven her for her transgressions, of course, but Lumiere forgave everything, even the genocide of his own brother-in-law's tribe, because Lumiere was barely a person even when he was alive. He'd always been god-like in her eyes, and perhaps that's why she'd been punished, because Lumiere had been human, he'd just been too kind, too dumb, too full of faith for his own good.

And then there was Secre – five hundred years as a bird, and she'd latched onto the first child that reminded her of a dead dream. She wasn't afraid to admit it anymore, of course. She hadn't just chosen Asta because he'd looked useful, but because he'd also looked the way she'd imagined her son would, because Secre was just as bad as Lumiere, had dreamed big dreams, and then lost everything in the process.

A woman who loved a man she couldn't have, and desired to bear children the man would never have given her – that was the unfortunate tragedy of one Secre Swallowtail. Secre had told Yami Sukehiro her story once, and he'd laughed at her, because who the hell cried over spilled milk?

Who, indeed.

Ten years after Asta passed away, she climbed aboard a ship and left the continent.

The decades went by, and her names changed. She continued to chop away at the black locks, and kept her nails trimmed and her wardrobe full of muted colors. She didn't return to the continent until a hundred years had passed, once the dragons had returned and the spirits of the sun and sky had finally awoken, and once the dwarves had returned from the deepest parts of the forests. By the time her wings touched the skies above her home continent, a second moon had appeared in the sky, and the elves of the other continents had deemed her continent safe again.

Kings had come and gone, but the great forest remained a deep green. The skull was still bone bleached white by the sun, but now there were more buildings in Hage, and dwarves who traded pelts for tatoes, and children of mixed heritage who didn't have to live in the forests of the Neutral Zone for fear of persecution.

Asta and Yuno's children's children had born and raised their own children, and now their grandchildren ran the farms, and even the schools, and maybe, just maybe she'd encountered one boy with deep red hair who reminded her a little of the Spade boy who'd sobbed freely on his wedding day to her son, her Asta. Names changed, but maybe souls didn't. Maybe souls always remained, maybe the souls of Asta and Yuno were in every single person inhabiting the bustling village that was no longer a village, maybe even the dwarves who'd emerged from the great forest had felt these souls, the souls of the wizard kings who'd married in front of the whole country and led their kingdom into the future.

��Well, well, well – if it isn't little miss songbird herself.”

Secre turned around to face the demon who hadn't made a sound at Asta's funeral, the demon who now walked freely with its black and white skin, and eyes as bloody red as the rubies that used to adorn Lumiere's crown.

“You're still here.”

“Where else would I be?”

Secre didn't answer him, instead turned back to the human and dwarf children squealing and running around a pen full of clucking chickens, daring each other to pet one of the creatures. She'd never experienced this kind of peace, because she hadn't been raised with love and freedom to breathe. She was born to serve, and serve she did until there was no one left to serve.

“That one,” the Anti-Magic Demon pointed to a short, pretty woman with hair as blue as the sky, “is the dwarf girl's daughter with that crazy human that used to paint pictures of everything. The dwarves can live almost as long as us, you know. The old bat is still around here somewhere, but she mostly stays inside now.”

“What are you still doing here? You got what you wanted, remember?”

The Anti-Magic Demon bristled, but didn't budge. “I'm here cuz I wanna be here – why are you back?”

Secre shrugged. “No reason, seemed like as good a time as any.”

Finally the demon went quiet, and Secre exhaled.

Before she'd left, she'd blessed Asta and Yuno's grandchildren with small kisses on top of their little foreheads. She didn't have much money to her name, but she had Lumiere's jewels, old and dull, but still good enough for a pawn shop or a merchant. She'd left them to Asta and Yuno's children before she'd left, and now that she'd returned, she'd expected them to have already paid for someone's wedding, maybe even a house. Instead, Secre found the jewels encrusted into busts of Lumiere, Asta, Yuno, and herself.

Secre stared at her doppelganger, unblinking.

“Is that yer mumma,” Secre heard a loud, squeaky voice say. Secre ignored the voice, and continued to stare at the busts.

“Oi! Old lady! Don't ignore me!”

Secre turned her head in a flash, because she was still inhuman, still two steps from becoming a demon like the Anti-Magic Demon and Zagred, and she was mad, she was horrible, and she just wanted to be left alone.

But the little boy with fat cheeks and stocky legs had other plans for her.

“Don't ignore me, Old Lady!” He fumed. Secre balked at the feisty little child, barely two feet tall.

“Don't bother the nice lady,” called a pretty voice, and it was a voice Secre hadn't heard in almost two hundred years, so she whipped around to face her demon, the demon impersonating his voice.

“Pappy, the old lady is a ghost!” The boy squealed, half horror and half amazement etched on his face as his father plucked him off the ground and into his arms.

“That's not very nice,” said a short man with thick frames, dusky colored skin, and Lumiere's voice.

“Oh my god,” the man gushed in awe, and Secre was barely five feet tall, but she had at least half a foot on the dwarf man, the man who had Lumiere's voice, and Lumiere's aura, and his beautiful, glowing smile.

“Pappy, ghost!” The little boy complained again, and Secre wished she could just disappear, maybe she should disappear, because the more she stared, the more the little boy looked too much like Asta, was too loud, and there was a dwarf with Lumiere's soul standing in front of her, and Secre had wished she'd stayed away, far away.

“Are you the esteemed Miss Nero?” The man began again. “Oh my god, you are her! They said you'd return, but no one knew when! My students at the school, they play games with the antibirds, pretending one of them is you! It is you! I can't believe it! We thought you'd never come home! Have you met the Sister at the church? We've been waiting for you! It's really you!!!”

And Secre drowned, drowned in the liquid gold eyes, drowned in the the beautiful smile, the beautiful voice of the dwarf who'd inherited Lumiere's soul.

“Well, now you have to stay. Can't sleep with a single man who's just tryna raise his baby in these trying times – if yer gonna taste the forbidden fruit, then commit.”

“Should I be hearing that from you?” Secre snapped back at the demon lounging on a bed of flowers.

“I'm just sayin', little songbird – when you get to my age, you see it all. You want it all, so why not take it?”

“Because they're dead,” Secre concluded. “A moment of weakness doesn't need to turn into a lifetime of regret.”

“Who said you needa regret anything? He loves you, and his kid calls you Ghost Mommy when he thinks you're not listening.”

Secre flinched, because it's true, because she overstayed her welcome, because she gave false hope to a man who's now hopelessly in love with her.

“Don't think of it as use, and be used,” the Anti Magic Demon chuckled harshly, as if reading her mind. “He had a choice too – to choose to ignore you, and to move on with his life, but the minute he saw you, he fell in love. You wanna say no, then say no, but remember – he chose to be with you, and you chose to be with him.”

“Is it them?” Secre whispered.

“Maybe, maybe not. Does it matter?”

“Secre! Secre, are you out there? Dinner's ready!” Called a voice from far away.

“Lumiere couldn't cook for his life,” she whispered hollowly, wiping tears from her cold cheeks.

“And the little brat never disrespected a woman in his life, but the second that little punk saw you, he called you a crusty little ghost. How's that for a reincarnation?”

“Bird Lady, dinner is ready!” The little boy with the fat cheeks and stumpy little legs screeched louder than Asta ever did, and she cried, she cried because she missed her Lumiere, and she missed the magicless little boy she grew to care for like a son.

“See, little songbird,” the Anti-Magic Demon whispered, sliding closer, so close that he was mere inches from her crying face, its own eyes hollow and cold and lonely, “after a while, it doesn't matter anymore. After a while, we die too, and death – it's a cold, lonely affair. You got nothing to lose.”

“Bird lady?” The little boy called hesitantly, staying some feet back, because the Anti-Magic Demon was the village watcher, the wraith that simultaneously protected and scared the living daylights out of the creatures living in Hage.

Secre wiped the tears from her face and climbed to her feet. “I'll be right there,” she called back, and the little boy nodded once before shooting back to the little house they called home.

“You found your home,” Secre surmised.

The Anti-Magic Demon hummed in response, laying back against the flowers, eyes fixed on the twin moons in the sky.

“Home,” Secre repeated to herself as she made her way back to her little house with her two little dwarves.

It seemed she'd finally found one as well.

#Black Clover #secre swallowtail #lumiere silvamillion clover #asta #avafanfics

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notesfromthefielddesk · 4 years ago

Text

Episode 1 - Malinowski

Episode link; https://open.spotify.com/episode/6nIUBg5IthVY6F1caobf1N?si=04759ed73f474e39

We hear the fizz of the surf and some seagulls

John

Imagine yourself set down surrounded by all your gear alone on a tropical beach, close to a native village, while the dinghy which brought you sails away out of sight.

Now imagine, you look down that beach and see a man. He’s sat behind a desk wearing a tweed suit. Is that a microphone? You head over to investigate and realise he is narrating your actions.

Hi! this is notes from the field desk.

Theme

John

Why don’t you grab a seat… I guess on the sand. I’d offer you a chair but honestly getting this one here was hard enough. It’s a good one though, one of those ones with lumbar support. I insisted on it.

I said “if i’m going to sit behind a desk on a tropical beach for months you better believe i’m having lumbar support.” The guys on the fishing boat were not impressed. You should have seen their faces when they saw the desk.

Oh.. I seem to be sinking in the sand a little, would you mind, yeah if you just grab the other side. (Skuffling) Okay should be good now.

Transport and sinking aside it’s a pretty good office though right? I know you can see it but do you mind if I just describe for the benefit of the tape?

I am sat on Maliu Island just off the coast of Papua New Guinea. We’re at the North West Shoreline. It’s early morning the sun still rising. Looking out over the bay the lightly rippled sea shimmers in a thousand tints caught briefly on it’s continuously moving surface. In shallow spots amid turquoise vegetation, you see rich purple stones overgrown with weeds. Where the water is smooth unruffled by wind the sky and land are reflected in colours ranging from sapphire to the milky pink shadows of the mist enveloped coastline.

brief silence just washing of waves

John

I know what you’re thinking. Why the desk? I actually think this is a stroke of genius. I was talking to my supervisor, Susan, and she told me theres a debate in anthropology about the separation between field and desk.

You know anthropology? We’re like sociologists who like travel and hate maths.

Just so you know in academic circles that joke kills.

Anyway, apparently theres loads of articles about how anthropologists go to the field and they meet all people. Then they go back to their desks, in the universities and libraries and whatever. And then they write things that don’t relate to the people. Which makes going pointless in the first place. At least I think that’s what they were getting at, I sort of skimmed them, and they seemed to fit with this other idea of mine so… Sort of just ran with it.

My main idea, was that i’d recreate the research of the first anthropologist. Sort of a peer review, what did he get right, what did he get wrong. So i’m recreating “Argonauts of the Western Pacific” By Malinowski.

There were others before him, some old english blokes called Taylor and Frazer. Some people even say this Greek fella Herodetus was the first. But Malinowski was the first one to get the travel bit down. Before him most of these guys relied on reports they got from colonial officers or missionaries or even worse amateurs, usually wealthy people, running around writing nonsense.

Nowadays we’d call Taylor or Fraser armchair anthropologists. Taking the observations done by others and theorising about it. AKA philosophers, am I right?

Not a joke fan, noted.

Malinowski thought that the studies done before him were theoretically strong but the data unscientifically gathered. To successfully study the “other” you had to go and live with them see the world through their eyes. If you lived with them and participated in their community you could make objective observations about how their society worked. He said this becoming native was key and to achieve it you have to stay in the field for at least a year.

So the problem of early anthropology was people not leaving their desks to collect data, and the problem of modern anthropology is people leaving for the desk and forgetting the field. I thought two birds, one stone. I’ll bring the desk to the field.

(Disappointed) Oh. You were wondering about the tweed on a tropical island. Well in scientific study you control the variables right? If I want to see the Trobriand Islands like Malinowski did I need to recreate his experience. He was a posho, and in the photos he wore this weird colonial outfit which I couldn’t find but I figured this would work just as well.

Same deal with my travel route. I flew to Brisbane, not clear how he got there but we will say Brisbane was the starting point. I sailed up the coast from there to Cairns. From there I chartered a boat to Papua New Guinea. I’m not really a big boat guy and it was a lot longer than I expected so I was sick most of the way. But good news, so was Malinowski so we’ll count that as scientific accuracy.

We arrived pretty late at Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea. Malinowski doesn’t describe it but to be honest, I was a bit disappointed. It’s a massive city. I was sort of hoping to be far flung you know, cut off from civilisation the way Malinowski says you should be. I knew this was a risk though, in the intro to Argonauts Malinowski mentions that even back then in 1915 Native communities were melting away.

I tried to put my disappointment aside. After all, this wasn’t my final destination. And hey look at this, pretty cut off right? I took a car the following morning down the coast to Deba, I know that’s not how he would have done it but I couldn’t find a boat willing to take my desk. At Deba, I managed to bribe my way onto a fishing boat. Now here I am.

I know it’s not really the Trobriand Islands. But Malinowski hung around here and Moresby for a while and with the desk this is as far as I can get. I have now, in the words of Malinowski “spread my nets in the correct place” now it’s time to wait and see what falls into them.

Waves washing on the shore. Drag this out 10-15 seconds, see how it feels in the edit.

John

Seems like no-one coming. So Let’s go over some theory in the mean time. Don’t whine we’ll keep it light. You can paddle while I talk it’s mostly for my notes anyway.

Sound of someone paddling in sea

Malinowski was a functionalist, which means he thought all our social behaviour is an extension of our physical needs. He argued that thinking about it this way you could understand any behaviour, however strange, by understanding what need it filled.

Example, magic, weird right? Malinowski said no. It’s a response to emotional distress. When something bad happens that you can’t explain it’s comforting to fill that void of understanding, with Magic. Malinowski says that’s why magic persists in modern society. Like when you have a shit month and say it’s because mercury is in retrograde, it’s comforting even if you don’t fully believe it.

But this doesn’t just happen after the fact, participating in magic can make us feel like we’re in control of the future, which is strange and scary. That’s like saying “Next month Mercury is in retrograde get the incense ready.”

Remember that guy Frazer I talked about earlier? This is basically his theory of magic and religion. He said people realise they aren’t powerful enough to control nature so they ask higher powers to help. Malinowski loved Frazer, total fan boy, used to carry his book around, so it’s not surprising he borrows a lot of his ideas.

That other guy, Taylor, he would say we’ve advanced as a society beyond the need for magic. Through industrialisation we can control nature. Any magical belief left over in society was a “survival.” It used to serve a useful function in society but now it doesn’t, it’s just a silly ornament that we should throw out. Imagine a twitter atheist bro, “uhh horoscopes are stupid, haven’t you heard of this thing called science.”

Malinowski, not so much a fan of Taylor. He said no Taylor you dummy, society is functional. How can there be a social behaviour that doesn’t have a function. Doesn’t make sense. He said the function probably just changed to serve a different purpose.

Despite that little spat, they all basically agreed in an evolutionary perspective. That less advanced societies are what our society looked like in the past. By studying other people maybe it can help us understand the weird things we do now.

So i’m here to take an objective look at Malinowski’s objective look. A hundred years ago he was on the Trobriand Islands, so now they should look like the UK did in 1920. I suppose that big city at Port Moresby was a good sign they were right.

Oh shit, I’m actually late to teach my tutorial. Just gunna Skype in. In the mean time i’ll leave you with a recording of a passage from “Argonauts of the Western Pacific.”

Waves washing on shore maybe ten seconds

“The goal is, briefly, to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world. We have to study man, and we must study what concerns him most intimately, that is, the hold which life has on him. In each culture, the values are slightly different; people aspire after different aims, follow different impulses, yearn after a different form of happiness. In each culture, we find different institutions in which man pursues his life-interest, different customs by which he satisfies his aspirations, different codes of law and morality which reward his virtues or punish his defections. To study the institutions, customs, and codes without understanding the desires and feelings of these people is, in my opinion, to miss the greatest reward which we can hope to obtain from the study of man.

These generalities the reader will find illustrated in the following chapters. We shall see there the savage striving to satisfy certain aspirations, to attain his type of value, to follow his line of social ambition. We shall see him led on to perilous and difficult enterprises by a tradition of magical and heroical exploits, shall see him following the lure of his own romance. Perhaps as we read the account of these remote customs there may emerge a feeling of solidarity with the endeavours and ambitions of these natives. Perhaps man’s mentality will be revealed to us, and brought near, along some lines which we never have followed before. Perhaps through realising human nature in a shape very distant and foreign to us, we shall have some light shed on our own. In this, and in this case only, we shall be justified in feeling that it has been worth our while to understand these natives, their institutions and customs.”

Waves washing on shore for maybe ten seconds

John

Well…that was… an interesting tutorial. In the end we talked a lot about Malinowski’s diaries rather than argonauts. They were published in 1967, a while after he died. In part probably to protect his reputation, as it turns out. To be honest, I hadn’t read them in depth. But my students said they show he was kind of a racist. More like he was a racist, throughout. He curses the Trobriand Islanders, calls them lazy and stupid. Also it seems like all through his research he was bribing the islanders with tobacco to include him, and dance, or do magic. It all comes across… unscientific.

But I said to them, this is just his diary, his private thoughts. I’m sure, when he went to the field he was able to set his personal prejudice to the side and carry out good research.

They didn’t agree. First they said, objectivity wasn’t possible because people know their being watched and that changes things. They gave the example

From of a photo from Argonauts of the Western Pacific with the caption “A Ceremonial Act of the Kula." A shell necklace is being offered to a Trobriand chief. Behind the guy presenting the necklace is a row of six bowing boys, one of them sounding a conch. All the figures stand in profile, their attention apparently concentrated on the rite of exchange. But if you look again, you see one of the bowing Trobrianders is looking at the camera.

To be honest when you look at the other pictures, Malinowski does look awkwardly out of place. Hardly, a member of the community. And Malinowski definitely skewed the results with the bribes.

Sorry, the tide is coming in and the waves are now washing onto my brogues. Would you mind helping me shift the desk a bit further up the beach.

General awkward moving the desk sounds.

Sorry where was I? Right, secondly, they said Malinowski was wrong. Those colonial officers and missionaries, it wasn’t that they couldn’t be objective because they weren’t scientists. But because nobody is objective, we’ve all got baggage, things that have happened to us that make us think a certain way.

He couldn’t just leave his racism in the diary because it effected the way he thought about everything. They said when you claim something is objectively true you’re really making a claim about authority.

Remember, before, how we were talking about the evolutionary stuff. They said that is based on the assumption that European civilisation was the peak of human society and everything else is on the same track to becoming that.

They said that’s what colonialism was, British people going around the world claiming they were the height of civilisation so they should be in charge. By being in charge they’d make them better. They called that “The White Mans Burden.” Not the students, the colonial officers. What Malinowkski’s diary proved was that he was just as prejudiced, just as guilty of this way of thinking. He saw them as savages and backwards, less evolved. and that wasn’t just a private opinion, that formed the basis of his theories.

I said, wasn’t that just cancel culture?

They groaned at that. One of them said really cancelling someone was just challenging the authority of their statements and actions. When Malinowski was “cancelled” it challenged the authority of colonial racism. Even if he only thought in private that the Trobriand Islanders were lesser it still effected how he treated them and described them. The same way it effected British colonial officers descriptions and treatment those they ruled.

That’s why anthropology is suspicious of objectivity, because objectivity is a claim to authority and authority leads to misrepresentation and mistreatment. In other words, arriving as an anthropologist and claiming to be able to see someone else society objectively is like saying “I’m big your small, I’m smart, you’re dumb and there is nothing you can do about it.”

They stumped me a bit at the end there, couldn’t really follow, but I did feel hurt. I said “if that’s all true and I’m replicating his work then how am I different from Malinowski. Am I a racist?” It got a bit awkward after that.

Still, I think there is some merit in what I’m doing. I’m not a racist. So I can asses Malinowski’s work, see the flaws. Societies still advance so, i’ll just see how things have changed, have they become like us? I told them I would carry on and prove I could be objective.

Anyway a lot to think about. [Phone ring]

John

Apparently, the students have complained. And Susan has reminded me that my contract requires I teach the tutorials in person. That this fieldwork was not cleared and that I have not done an ethics form. Further, she reminded me that the department does not subscribe to a teleological perspective. I asked what that meant and she said to do some fucking reading for once.

Still, Malinowski teaches us a lot. Fieldwork is still really important in anthropology, you’ve got to go and talk to people and understand their perspectives. That’s his lasting legacy more than the theoretical work. Plus, I suppose his diary teaches us that we should keep an eye on our assumptions. And remember that no matter what we do, like bring a desk to the field, we always sneak into our work. So maybe we should just be upfront about that.

So - would you mind helping to carry this desk to that village? I need to get back or i’ll get fired.

more desk moving noises

I just realised I never asked what you were doing here.

Really!? that’s disgrace-

Theme

This was notes from the field desk written by me John McGrail.

This episode references

Clifford, John (1983) On Ethnographic Authority in Representations, No. 2 (Spring, 1983)

Dahl, Roald (1988) Matilda published by Jonathan Cape

Malinowski, Bronislaw (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific Routledge

Malinowski, Bronislaw (1948) Magic, Science and Religion Waveland Press

Malinowski, Bronislaw (1967) with introduction by Firth, Raymond (1989) A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term Stanford University Press

Tylor, Edward Burnett (1871) Primitive Culture published by the Cambridge University Press

Young, Michael W. (2004) Malinowski: Odyssey of an Anthropologist 1884-1920 Yale University Press

The sounds were all taken from Freesound. If you can donate to them you totally should, I would not have been able to make this podcast without it.

The sounds were;

Water Lap by snog https://freesound.org/people/snog/sounds/67031/

Sand slidding out of shovel slowly by XfiXy8 https://freesound.org/people/XfiXy8/sounds/467301/

Tropical Ocean Waves » Mau U Mae Beach Waves by tombenedict https://freesound.org/people/tombenedict/sounds/397594/?page=2#comment

Tropical Island by rich wise https://freesound.org/people/richwise/sounds/451743/

The theme music was dark side of my students, posted by Mia Stodzwiekow created by Tadeusz Maszewski https://freesound.org/people/miastodzwiekow/sounds/341770/

#podcast #anthropology #arts and entertainment #culture #society #transcript #audiodrama

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sorrynotsorryforwritingthat · 4 years ago

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I did actually write this instead of sleeping.

Today the rules in schools regarding bullying are strictly a no violence policy which in theory sounds good, but if one students feels entitled enough to inflict harm on another student they will do so regardless, and the victim of bullying (of course, this term is not necessarily referring to physical harm inflicted on others, but might also refer to verbal or emotional harm inflicted, even though this is not what I am discussing at this point) might even get expelled when push comes to shove, seeing as it will often be the pupils words against each other, sometimes even more people will back the bully simply because they’re afraid of them, or because they are genuinely friends with them (the bully and their friends might not always see themselves as the bullies, a fictional example of this is the group called the marauders in the popular series Harry Potter written by J.K. Rowling, that without a doubt traumatized and bullied one Severus Snape in the fictional piece of literature. They still saw themselves as the good guys and later drove Severus down a very dark and lonely path).

It has been proven time and time again that the current system in place isn’t working, and the only thing that will make a more accepting society is a more inclusive education in schools. It is important that everyone has the freedom of their own beliefs, but when these beliefs are challenged it should not result in harassment of fellow students. When indoctrination often starts at a young age it is the school systems responsibility to counter-act the spreading of information that might end up hurting genuine human beings in the future, after all, one of the current school systems the greatest responsibility isn’t spreading correct information to educate the next generation, but to raise us to be functioning members of this society.

It stands to argue that this is a harmful thing, when it usually tends to narrow peoples’ mindsets as well as resulting in that the same mistakes continue repeating, as well as the powerful people keep their power. People in positions of power will often do everything they can to make sure they keep that power, and that they get their way the majority of the time.

That is why the two-party-system in the United States of America, for example, is a faulty system, seeing as the party that won the election will go on to become president, and then change as much as possible just because, come next election, there’s a 50% chance their opponent will get voted in the office instead and so the cycle will repeat.

Humans are animals that appreciate patterns, as do nature, but after a while they get tiresome, when we have found every single way to squeeze every ounce of power from it, we will move on to the next shiny cycle to repeat, extort and abuse. It’s in and of itself a cycle, a pattern that will never be broken unless we learn to appreciate change as much as we appreciate safety and stability; because the earth is faulty, that much is obvious, humans take, and we take, and we take and what will happen when we have concurred everything on this planet, in this galaxy? What will happen when there’s no more land for us to colonize and rule?

Is there such a thing as a society where everyone is happy? Probably not, seeing as the thing with opinions are that they’re allowed to be different. But when said opinions directly hurt marginalized groups of people, when they are directly responsible for murder, are they still valid opinions? When you can trace the genocide of an entire group of people back to a person with an opinion, is this persons' opinion still valid? When a hundred of people die because doctors don’t give them proper medical treatment based on an opinion, can it still be regarded as valid?

An opinion formed independently from outside influence, based on what information the individual themselves has gathered, free from emotional attachments based on facts (feelings are a valid thing to take into consideration, but seeing how easily our own brain can trick us into thinking we are experiencing one thing when we’re, in fact are not, is scary and if we only rely on feelings to base our opinions on, that would be based on your own brains confirmation bias because we as humans don’t like to be wrong), is what might be called a valid opinion rooted in truth.

Then we have the question about morality, what is morally wrong and what isn’t? Seeing as this will be the guidelines for how we live our life's I fret that schools don’t teach us enough about this from a young age. What we deem morally correct are something highly personal, even though our society teaches us about some things that we generally seem to agree on; one of these examples being murder.

We as a society can in general agree that murder is wrong, immoral, but why? The active act of robbing someone of their choice, to without consent and with a single (or sometimes multiple) motion erase someone from existence (not entirely of course, seeing as the victims family and friends and every single action the victim has done will affect people, as humans tend to have an enormous influence on each other subconsciously or even concisely as the idea of random isn’t quite applicable to the humans psyche), is generally regarded as highly immoral. Does it have something to do with that people in general fear of the true nothingness that is death?

Humans are afraid of things we do not know, and we certainly don’t know death, at all. It is something mysterious, but maybe it isn’t. Death might just be the state when your brain stops processing your surroundings, when your consciousness stops existing. Why are humans obsessed with death? Maybe because we know that our days on this earth are numbered, our mortal lives will eventually come to an end. So why do we insist on hating other people?

Wouldn’t that be considered as a significant waste of time? To spend our numbered days on this planet insisting that our hate is rooted in love. In the end it will always be hate that is the root of our misery on this earth, as well as the fear of what we do not understand. Humans strive to understand the impossible, yet we seem to also resent it.

Words can hurt as much, if not more, than actions sometimes. And often the words will slowly nest itself into our brains, seeking a place to find permanent residence in, and we will let them. Because we are the only enemies we ever seem to lose to, as we are our own worst critic as well as our own best friend.

We can only see the world from our own perspective, we can’t swap minds with someone to see how they view the world, and regardless of how much we might try, we can’t ever understand all the complex threads that makes a person, but we sure as hell will try. Opinions are formed through life experience, so when we only have our own lives to base our opinions on, all of our opinions will automatically be biased in some way.

Then we have the concept of normality, that some things are normal and some things are not. What would you describe normal as? The opinion of the majority or the common trends we see in people? Why would we as a society group normal and good and safe in the same category? Normal is a synonym for common, and I would like to argue that only uncommon people have been able to contribute to change.

Is change a good thing? Or should we prioritize safety and stability? In today's world, I would like to reason that change is needed. While money and power rule the world, those without it will not be able to live as successful, or at least as influential, as the rich. What even is success? The definition of success today can be traced back to money, as humans desire to be in control of themselves and things around them. And without money, we are dependent on society to help us out, we’ll never afford everything that we want, and that’s just how it is.

The economy in the world is one of the most important topics in today's world, and that might just be because it is, in the end, the foundation of our modern society, and it’s been that way for an extended period of time.

The ones with money, if they do not go out of their way to do so, will never understand the ones without it, the privileged will do whatever it takes to stay privileged, and when the less privileged defend themselves society will, maybe to spare their own consciousness, find a way to blame them for their own misery.

In the beginning it was the church, finding ways to get as many as possible to join them, and by doing, so they gained power. With this power they evaded taxes, murdered, repressed womens' rights (in for example old Norse cultures women where regarded as, if not the stronger gender, at least equal to men), and found ways to alienate whole sexual identities, as well as justify slavery.

Today, it is still the remaining influence of the Abraham religions had on society that justifies the alienation of human beings from society. Poland and Russia are starting to draw back on their progress of rights for the LGBTQ+ community, and homosexuality is still met with the death penalty in some places, of course, even in progressive countries' homophobia is common, and insensitive people will always exist in society, I’m afraid, seeing as it was built on ignorance.

Pushing the American people to “settle” for a president is a, if I may so myself, stupid system. As of today, it’s election day in America, and now people are fearing for their own civil rights! It’s quite outrageous. Only a bit over half of the people in America vote in the normal elections (this year, it will probably be higher than that seeing the huge Trump vs. Biden situation), and if it was that way in, for example my country, the whole democracy would fall apart.

We clearly see the small amount of value that peoples own opinions against the overwhelming amount of power that politicians hold in elections, and we also see the clear desperation and willingness to do whatever it takes to keep oneselfs' power.

No one in a free nation, no less in a democracy should have to fear for their safety on the basis of anything to do with things out of their control.

#politics #sleep deprived ramblings #bullying #i guess #i dont fucking know #i will regret this #im not fine #queer stuff #idk #enby #fuck trump #i tried #one person will read this #ramblings #sleep is overrated #praise the coffe gods #send help

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cramulus · 4 years ago

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Trance Dancing - The Rave

by Jason Keehn

(this essay was formerly posted at https://duversity.org/archives/rave.html, but it’s gone, so I’m saving it by copying it here)

Can trance-dancing save the planet

Can you imagine a crazier notion?

Thousands of bored youth pumping themselves up with drugs, going out to huge underground parties and dancing maniacally to electronic rhythms and psychedelic light-shows till dawn.

And this is supposed to help the world?

Shouldn't we be putting our time instead into ecological or political activism, or at least doing some kind of charity work? What about the serious spiritual disciplines that claim to offer the only true path to personal--and thereby social--transformation? What good does all our drug-taking and revelry do for the hundreds of millions of dispossessed, fucked over and starving around the world--not to mention all the untold species and eco-systems being destroyed?

Hard to answer. And yet some of us still have this inescapable feeling, maybe even faith, that what we are doing, confused, silly and commercialised as it often is, is at its core absolutely necessary. . . not just to us, but in the bigger picture, somehow. . .

Why is it that at the peak moments (admittedly rare) of the very best underground house/techno/rave parties, we get this miraculous sense of hope, of possibility, of transformation . . . a feeling that we're actually heading somewhere. . . together. . . towards a brighter future, one worth living in, one where we've returned to some kind of harmony with ourselves, with each other and with our planet as a whole?

Is it "just the drugs," a kind of consensus delusion, or might there be some basis in reality for these feelings, hard to justify as they may seem once we're back out in the normal world?

More dimly sensed than clearly expressed, the feeling for such a possibility permeates the entire global underground dance scene. Thousands of promoters exploit it to inflate their party invites with cheesy techno-spiritual imagery. It inspires and guides much of the music, and some small but key fraction of the hard-core partiers. The rest of the crowds who fill the floors at parties get off on it as a second or third-hand charge that sets the party apart from being just another club, without ever thinking about taking it seriously.

At moments, some hundreds, and maybe even thousands or tens of thousands, of "ravers" have probably found themselves sensing/feeling/wondering that what they were doing might be something really big, something that could really change things at a larger scale.

But of course only people who turn themselves inside out with large amounts of drugs would even conceive the question: Can trance-dancing save the planet?

A few of us, myself included, have made public fools of ourselves already by answering in the affirmative, and even giving some tentative reasons why. Here I want to try to introduce a new way of thinking that complements and deepens what already been proposed by people like Fraser Clarke and Terence McKenna. They see psychedelicized mass trance dances as the only quick, viable antidote to the egotism at the base of the western, techno-industrial mega-machine maniacally chomping away at the life-fabric of the planet.

This different line of thought is based on a simple but profound idea first expressed by the philosopher and teacher of temple dances G. I. Gurdjieff, who died in 1949. His idea is almost completely unknown, outside of his hard to read book All and Everything.

If true, it has staggering implications for ourselves, for our planet, even for our entire solar system. I don't expect anybody to automatically take it as Goddess's given truth, but its worthy of some serious attention.

Energies

As all "ravers" know, there is a mysterious something that makes a rave different from just another club or party-scene. We call this "the vibe"--a mixture of intangibles impossible to find anywhere else, except maybe at a dead show or a rainbow gathering. Roughly put, the vibe consists of: an attitude of openness, sharing, empathy and playfulness; intense, unselfconscious dancing; a collective altered state of consciousness, thanks to the combined effects of specific rhythms, lights and psychedelic drugs; and, at its height, a melding of group feeling and energy into an ecstatic, orgasmic release that feels nothing less than spiritual or religious--albeit in a form that has little resemblance to any type of spirituality or religion we are familiar with.

We all know that "energy" is somehow key to all of this. We know we raise and release energy through our dancing, our feelings, and our interaction on the dance-floor. Energy was one of the main buzzwords of the early English rave scene. The vibe is all about energy--vibration, after all.

But what is this energy? What does it consist of, where does it come from, where does it go? Are there different kinds of energies? Do they have different purposes?

Back around the turn of the century, Gurdjieff and a group of friends travelled back and forth across the Middle East and Central Asia investigating humanity's true history, the nature of the cosmos, and the possibilities for humans to evolve consciously, from their own efforts. In the process, "the seekers of truth," as the group called themselves, also encountered the Masters of Wisdom still alive in that part of the world (the Khwajagan). The Khwajagan were considered to be the bearers of some of the highest spiritual knowledge on the planet, handed down continuously for thousands of years.

One of the focuses of Gurdjieff's research was the transformation of substances and energies--both chemical and subtle--in the human organism. He also learned a large number of temple dances, which he understood as databases in movement intended to preserve ancient knowledge.

Eventually, Gurdjieff returned to the West and presented his synthesis of these searches as a "system of ideas" and a practical method for self-transformation.

Feeding the Moon

Gurdjieff's quest was guided by the basic question, "what is the sense and significance of human life on earth?"

His conclusion, expressed in writing only towards the end of his life, was that humanity does not exist for itself, but to supply the planet, the moon, and the solar system with a particular gradation of energy which they need to thrive and grow. At times he called this principle, "feeding the Moon," though it is not clear whether he meant this literally or merely as a handy symbol.

He believed that the entire universe is in some sense alive and in a process of continuously evolving (and if not evolving, actively devolving). In what could be compared to a cosmic fractal, the universe is in a process of unfolding and giving birth to itself, each birth at a new level mirroring in its unique way that of other levels (known nowadays as the principle of self-similarity). In what Gurdjieff called "the ray of creation," "God" or the Absolute gives birth to universes; universes give birth to stars, which give birth to planets, which give birth to organic life (viruses, bacteria, plants and animals) and to moons. Eventually a planet may become a star, its moon may become a planet in its turn, and "give birth" to its own moon, and so on, ad infinitum.

Just as all plants and animals need a variety of nutrients to exist, grow and reproduce, so our world and its siblings need a very specialised type of substance to fuel their processes--their planetary metabolisms, if you will. Supposedly, this special energetic substance can be produced only by human beings.

Reciprocal Maintenance

Gurdjieff's answer fits into what he called "the doctrine of reciprocal maintenance", the idea that every thing exists only insofar as it supports or "feeds" something else. Everything is part of a vast, interconnected and mutually reinforcing web of life. Or, "everything is something else's lunch," as ecologists like to say. This idea anticipated the science of ecology by at least half a century.

Examples: Bees don't just exist for themselves, they live to pollinate flowers. Algae exists to turn sunlight into more complex molecules, and feed other small creatures, such as plankton and krill. Krill feeds other slightly larger creatures, and even whales. Plants exist to turn sunlight and raw matter into organic compounds, and to feed animals. Worms exist to loosen soil for plants. Bacteria recycle waste into useable raw matter. Predators help to increase the strength and fitness of the herds they prey on by eliminating the weak and sick. Etc. etc.

In the scheme of things, humanity's essential role is that of a transformer of energy.

Human beings, according to this view, exist to serve the cosmic evolutionary process--and not the opposite, as the Bible would have it: that all of creation is merely a resource for us to use and abuse as we see fit.

Our possibilities as human beings are dependent on the degree to which we fulfil this function, a kind of "obligation" which nature imposes on us.

By Gurdjieff's view, this special energy could be produced two different ways: either involuntarily, at the moment of death, when a small "packet" is released into the atmosphere, or voluntarily, in greater or lesser amounts, through spiritual work.

Since Mother Nature, or Gaia, needs a definite quota of this energy from us, she will do whatever is necessary to make sure she gets it. If we don't provide the required intensities while alive, the total number of deaths will have to be increased in such a proportion as to yield the needed amount.

Devolution

Gurdjieff further believed that rather than progressing, the overall quality of human being (as opposed to externalizations like technology, culture, institutions, etc.) has actually been deteriorating over the last umpteen thousands of years, especially in "civilised" societies such as our own. He believed that in the very distant past, before the earliest recorded history, human beings had a much greater presence and power; in a sense, they were bigger, spiritually and existentially, than the vast majority of us today. He also believed that people once had a much greater life-span.

They were energy-pumps.

Gurdjieff had his speculations about what caused this decline in the quality of human being in the very remote past, perhaps even before the destruction of Atlantis (his theory of the "kundabuffer," explored at length in All and Everything). The upshot, though, is that humanity as a whole has "forgotten" how to perform its ecological function in the world--or simply no longer has the necessary juice to do it, which pretty much amounts to the same thing.

So if this is in fact the case--that we human beings generally no longer have the knowledge or ability to "pump" this energy intentionally--Gaia will be forced to increase the total quantity of human death to meet her needs.

This can be accomplished, of course, by 1) increasing the number of human births, and eventually deaths, and 2) by shortening the life-span of existing individuals, or 3) a combination of the two. The net results: Population increase. . . disease, and war.

Following this line of thinking, our increasing inability to properly transform and pump energy means that we have to be treated (by the Gaian mind, if you like) the same way we treat plants and animals, as something to be farmed, bred and harvested. Not a very dignified state of affairs!

So as the qualitative level of human being goes down, the number of human beings, and thereby of human deaths, goes up to account for the difference in energy. And of course, since organisms grow at different rates, with different energy requirements depending on their activities, we can imagine that there might be major fluctuations in the needs for our energies.

The Terror of the Situation

This suggests a radical, and terrifying, view of contemporary history: that the population explosion, famines, plagues, wars and massacres might not be due just to accidental or sociological and political causes but may be induced by the needs of the solar "eco-system" as a whole, with human beings acting for the most part unwittingly to effectuate these needs.

Think about all the horror and insanity that has gone done in the twentieth century, even just in terms of cold numbers: millions killed in World War One, hundreds of thousands wiped out in seconds at Hiroshima and Nagasake alone, millions massacred one way or another in the Nazi concentration camps; supposedly as many as twenty million Russians dying in combat in World War Two, not to mention another twenty million who died in the same period as a result of Stalinist persecution and forced famine. Millions died in the Chinese civil war, six or seven million in Cambodia under Pol Pot. Don't even bother counting all the famines in Africa and South East Asia over the last few decades.

Why the incredible surge of violent death all over the world, paralleled by an equally incredible population explosion? What is up with those peculiar humanoid beings living on the surface of Sol-III?

I'm not going to try to argue the merits of this scheme against other theories. Just chew on it for a while and see how it fits.

And so the picture painted is one of a race of hapless, deluded slaves to some kind of a cosmic food-chain the existence of which we don't even recognise. This is definitely insulting to all our best images of ourselves. But then how do we reconcile all our great assets, our supposed free will, intelligence, and creativity with the dismal facts of what we've done to each other for all of recorded history?

Are we really anything more than automatons most of the time?

Gurdjieff had what might seem to many a horribly bleak, cynical view:

that our ideas of free-will and individuality are a delusion, an image of our potential mistaken for a general fact of our existence. Bluntly put, we are blind products of genetics, conditioning and external influence; on an energetic level, we are next to nothing. We are less, in that sense, than most mammals even.

We have become experts at consuming energy and resources, parasites.

As a civilisation, we no longer transform energy into higher gradients and radiate it back out to the world, we just circulate like little ants in our vast urban hives and manufacture stuff, endless quantities of stuff. We know how to suck energy, make objects, and how to kill. Even if we're not killing each other off at a given moment, we're decimating untold numbers of living beings without even being grateful for their existence.

Sure, for the most part we don't feel ourselves that way, but anybody who's tripped a few times in public places probably had disturbing glimpses--at least--along these lines. We don't see other people--or ourselves--that way, because it's just too hard a vision to live with.

The path of return

This perspective provides a definite way of understanding the connection between our amazingly fucked up global situation and "spirituality"--or the lack thereof. Seen this way, spirituality has less to do with living according to some moral doctrine, or accumulating "spiritual" experiences and states, than with being able to transform and radiate energy of a particular quality.

If it is true that we have been suffering a generalised decline over millennia, all our human institutions must participate in and reflect that decline. So everything we associate with religion, in all its multifarious forms, would generally be a product and mirror of a messed up situation; in other words, just another part of the problem.

At its best, the spiritual component of religious traditions points to a return to what should be our natural base-line of being, something so distant we can barely remember or taste it except at moments of "peak experience," or with the help of psychedelic drugs, or as a result of long, intensive discipline.

Our so-called "salvation" is really more a matter of somehow pulling ourselves back up out of a dysfunctional, disenabled, alienated state to something like a natural way of being--not transcendence or cosmic consciousness or union with God or whatever. We need to re-learn "how to be and to do."

According to Gurdjieff, the two key principles to following this "path of return," were intentional suffering and conscious labour. Through engaging in intentional sufferings and conscious labours we begin again to release the kinds of energies we were intended to give off.

Of course by today's standards, this sounds like a bummer of a philosophy. Isn't life just supposed to be full of fun and games? On the other hand, if we're realistic we know that there's always going to be pain, struggle, suffering in life. If there weren't where would the joy and pleasure and flow be? So maybe rather than seek to escape suffering, or just submit to it blindly, it might make sense to choose your form of suffering and make something out of it.

Intentional suffering. Again, if it's true that we exist in a chronic low-energy state, one of inertia and stasis, it makes sense that in order to get back to a point of being able to consciously transform energy we would need to somehow exercise an enormous effort just to break out of our passivity. "Only super-efforts count." If you're physically weak from illness, it usually takes an extra effort to get to the point of being able to exercise on a regular basis, to return to your previous level of strength. Or as they say, no pain no gain.

This can apply on a lot of levels other than just the physical. Pain can take the form of a kind of moral or spiritual suffering deriving from, say, breaking habits, or confronting bad traits in one's character, or doing exactly that which you least like to do. Suffering in the form of sacrifice is necessary to be there for others, to truly love.

Conscious labour assumes that most of the "work" we do, of whatever nature, is not really conscious to begin with. We are driven by culturally programmed priorities, survival, automatic emotional needs, obsession, neurosis, ego. To work consciously assumes that one must first have become aware of how unconscious one is most of the time, of how automatic most of how our thoughts, feelings, perceptions and actions really are.

To even get to this point itself requires a lot of intentional suffering, because what could make us suffer more than waking up to how we really don't "own" ourselves?

Forms of work

This general process is what people who study Gurdjieff's ideas and methods generally call "work-on-oneself," or just "self-work."

No doubt for many orthodox "Gurdjieffians," this path of return can only occur in the framework of decades of commitment to the "work," in the manner it has been passed down to them.

Much of Gurdjieff's practical teaching consisted of dancing and physical exercises used in combination with meditation and concentration techniques. Some of the dances Gurdjieff himself invented, many were direct copies of the ancient temple dances he found during his travels. (These dances are a closely held secret of existing Gurdjieff groups, and rarely if ever performed in public.)

Other important components of his method were the techniques of "self-observation" and "self-remembering," designed to bring "essence" back into balance with "personality."

What is little known to the world at large, and almost completely suppressed within existing Gurdjieff groups, is that Gurdjieff was interested in and worked with drugs. The references to "active substances" other than alcohol, opium and cocaine in his writings are rare, and even then oblique (he tried to set up a "chemical laboratory" in Russia at one point--for synthesising what?); it is known, but little discussed, that Gurdjieff administered certain substances to some of his students.

The monks of the legendary Sarmoun Brotherhood, whom Gurdjieff spent time with, themselves cultivated and used a psychoactive plant they referred to as the "Herb of Enlightenment." Curiously, Oscar Ichazo, founder of Arica, a 70s psycho-spiritual organisation that also incorporated psychedelics and movement-work, claimed to have accessed the Sarmounis as well.*

Furthermore, we know from Gurdjieff himself that he considered his students "guinea pigs," his groups a laboratory in which he was conducting certain undefined experiments.

According to J. G. Bennett, one of his major students and better interpreters, Gurdjieff experimented continuously with his ideas, techniques and overall approach. While Gurdjieff always talked about his system, it was never fixed in a way that most of his followers seem to believe and dogmatically transmit it to others.

If everything Gurdjieff did was a kind of living laboratory, how does anybody know what were really the goals and working hypotheses and what was just part of the experiment? What if he kept certain pieces of his puzzle secret, knowing perhaps they were too explosive to make public at the time?

The new trance dance

Here is a radically new take on Gurdjieff's philosophy and mission, one that has a direct bearing on our neo-psychedelic-rave subculture:

Is it possible that trance-dancing is one of the most basic forms of intentional suffering and conscious labour?

Is it possible that such dancing, performed by the right people in the right way with the right intentions, is capable of producing exactly that same energy Gurdjieff believed Mother Nature needs from us? Could it be that the use of psychedelics in conjunction with intensive dancing to certain specific rhythms, by a new breed of individuals, may be a way to fill our cosmic obligation without the life-long spiritual training otherwise required?

My intuition is that this is indeed the case--unlikely as it may seem to all the "old school" esotericists and spiritualists.

Perhaps, in fact, we are not really now at the point of being able to do this--being "youthful" as we are, and prone to all the naiveté and follies of youth. But this may be what a certain number of us are instinctively moving toward. Maybe this is just that mysterious something we cross over into as we're peaking and pulsing together on the dance-floor.

Think about tribal trance dances. What better description could you think of for endurance dancing to the point of fainting in the service of the gods than intentional suffering and conscious labour?

Under different names, tribal peoples seem to commonly believe that their dances are essential to the gods, a form of offering, sacrifice, or service. Something necessary to keep the balance, to keep the rain falling, to keep the sun coming up, to keep things moving. That's why they're sacred dances. And so maybe it's not just the form of the dance that's sacred, or even what the dancers experience, it's in what they do: the energy they collectively release.

Isn't it odd that just when most of the cultures that still do this are either being destroyed or forgetting their own traditions, just at that same moment a whole tribalistic, "neo-shamanic" dance craze develops among western youth?

Consider: How does someone behave who has a deep instinct, but in whom that instinct has been muffled by hundreds or thousands of years of habitual suppression and invalidation? Perhaps every now and then the instinct manifests itself in a crude, awkward outburst, only to be quickly silenced by the embarrassed ego and the lack of any proper name or place for it in surrounding society.

In some of Bennett's writings on this whole theme, there is a tendency to paint the "feeding the Moon" scenario in extremes: either one is energetically inert and useless; or else one sacrifices one's life to spiritual work and helps to make up for everyone else's lack.

But must it be such a dichotomy? Maybe that's how it tends to be nowadays, but maybe it wasn't always if people used to "be more" than they are today. Maybe once upon a time (and still in some remaining aboriginal cultures), you didn't have to be a spiritual athlete, a specialist (monk, shaman, priest/priestess, etc.), to return your two or three "cents" to Nature.

Maybe even now, everyone can return some energy, given the right circumstances and maybe the right "assisting factors" too.

And what about the effect of psycho-active substances? If there is anything we know about psychedelics for sure, it is that they act as catalysts. They temporarily shift our system's mode of functioning, our rate of vibration, and enable transformations that are otherwise difficult to achieve--again passing. But what if that transformation, in tandem with the right kind of dancing and mindset, is just enough to enable the release of some special energy?

Does it matter that much whether we're in that state all the time, or just that we have regular access to it and can use it to do what we need to do?

Sure, we have no tradition of sacred dance, and few ravers dance till they drop, few dance with conscious devotional feeling or intent. What we do have, or at least aspire to, is a basic attitude that sets the tone when we come together for our celebrations: Peace-Love-Unity-Respect. Not bad for a point of departure.

And yet, just how conscious do you have to be of your intent if your instinct IS your intent? Maybe as we get high and move together our intent resurfaces into consciousness, and for those few sweet timeless moments we actually DO it, . . . and then we drift back down into consensus reality where there is no name for it, and the veils gradually cover it all up and soon we once again think we were there for nothing more than a good time and some cool music.

But the taste and scent of that ineffable "juice" still lingers, and it keeps us going in the days ahead, going back to more parties, wearing the clothes we associate with it, compulsively getting high and listening to mix tapes round the clock, searching for that rare synchronicity of time, place, people and music where it might magically happen again.

In some of his late writings, Bennett speculated that recent decades are seeing the birth of a new kind of person, maybe even a new race of sorts, with spiritual capacities different from the rest of society.

Could that be us?

And just what is that "juice," that energy, that special nutrient so needed for all things to live and grow in harmony? That erotic radiant mix of thankfulness, joy, and compassion that just wants to fuck the entire cosmos? Could it be . . . L-O-V-E?

OK, admittedly there are a lot of big ifs here. To try to prove that

a) human beings do give off energy when they die;

b) that some can give off an equivalent kind of energy intentionally while still alive;

c) that most of us don't or can't do this anymore;

d) that people could once upon a time do it better;

e) that the planet or the moon or the solar system requires this energy;

f) that if they don't get it human birth and death will automatically be increased with no say on our side;

g) that this energy can be produced through trance dancing among tribal peoples; and

h) that this energy can also be produced by teenagers dancing at parties with the help of drugs. . .

To try to prove, or even argue, all of that would be at least another article in itself. . . or more realistically, the basis for a life-time of research.

#gurdjieff #rave #dance #sacred movements

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tanadrin · 5 years ago

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Reordberend

(part 21 of ?; first; previous; next)

(BTW, as of this update, Reordberend is, by my count, a little over 45k words long, putting it in the territory of a shortish novel. That also makes it one of the longest SF stories I’ve ever written. It’s not the most popular thing I’ve ever posted on Tumblr, but it has gotten a steady trickle of notes. Knowing there are people out there who enjoy your work, even if it’s fairly niche, is the best motivation there is to keep writing. Thank you for reading!)

Katherine Alice Green The Guest Room in the Village Hall The High Settlement McMurdo Dry Valleys ANTARCTICA

to Dr. Eunice Valerie Gordon Trinity College Dublin Dublin 2 IRELAND

Dear Dr. Gordon,

I am writing yet another letter I won’t be able to send, which, I realize might make me seem like kind of a crazy person. The only defense I can plead, I guess, is that the perpetual darkness of the winters here does funny things to you if you’re not used to it, and I’ve had a lot of down time lately that I need to do something productive with. I have already written to my parents, to a couple of friends, and to my cat, which leaves only you. And these letters seem to have a way of focusing my thoughts, so maybe it’s not an entirely useless exercise.

Where to begin? Well, first of all, I’m alive. That may come as a surprise. It occured to me not long after I was marooned here that perhaps nobody knows that. No one has come looking for me, and why would they? If any rescue parties did go looking for the Albatross, I doubt they’d come this far south. Not in winter. But I did in fact survive the ship going down. I don’t think anybody else did. The Dry Valleys People didn’t find anyone else on the shore, alive or dead. I try not to think about that too much, but, to be honest, it still has me kind of fucked up.

Oh, that’s the other things. I’ve made contact with the Dry Valleys People. I am, as the return address indicates, currently living with them. They have welcomed me, rather reluctantly, and I’ll be able to remain at least until the first sunrise of spring. This was not necessarily a widely popular decision, and I’ve come to learn that the political situation among the DVP is rather complicated. They have always guarded their isolation and their independence, and they’re keen to keep guarding it in the future, but there are some among them who worry how long that will really be possible. I think this is something Dr. Wright foresaw, and tried to warn them about in the letter he sent with me. But as you might expect, this is something a large part of their community doesn’t want to hear or even think about, and my presence here is definitely fraught.

As for my original mission… well, it’s an unqualified success, despite the difficulties. I’ve learned a lot. The language, to start with. You won’t believe this, but they speak Old English here. No, not thee and thou and maketh yon Old English. Not Chaucer, even. Older. From their books and what they’ve told me, their ancestors used the West Saxon dialect of Old English, as spoken about the year 1000 AD, as the basis for the language they taught their children. Dr. Wright knew this, of course. That’s how he was able to communicate them and win their trust; he showed an affinity for the same history and the same long-term perspective they cared about. If it seems weird that a bunch of people would move to Antarctica, forsake almost every modern convenience, and deliberately teach their kids a dead language that would be useless in the wider world, well, all I can say I guess is that humans have done a lot of weird shit for a lot of weird reasons throughout history. I think I am beginning to understand why the ancestors of the DVP did what they did. Some of them have tried to explain it to me, but there is a gap in our worldviews here that is difficult to bridge.

One of the DVP that I have befriended is a poet named Leofric. His sister, Leofe, taught me the language, but I’ve learned a lot more about their literature from him. It’s primarily an oral literature, although they do write some of it down. They like long, semi-narrative poetry that draws heavily on the imagery of the natural world, and I would say that it owes something to the ancient Anglo-Saxon poetry they keep in their books, except that, of course, the environment here is nothing like the environment of England one thousand years ago. But there are still some poetic traditions they have inherited from those earlier examples. For instance, their world is harsh, and unforgiving, and from a certain angle looks like a world in decline. The ancient English (so I am told) were surrounded by great Roman ruins they spoke of as being the work of metaphorical giants; here, they have the ruins of two hundred years of scientific and industrial exploration of the Antarctic coast. And their world, too, is enclosed by a vast cold sea, although this one has penguins in it at least.

Aside from the language, the founders of the DVP don’t seem to have intended to recreate medieval English society. There are no kings. There is a semi-formal system of village headship by seniority, but the social hierarchy is very flat. Marriage, inheritance, and choice of occupation all take place on fairly egalitarian terms, and their strictest taboos surround the sharing of labor and resources, not sexuality or religion. I wonder how much of their customs are the result of gradual cultural evolution, or some deliberate effort at creating a planned community. There are lots of funny Utopian experimental communities out there, but most tend to fail after a generation. In a way, this one couldn’t fail, because they had no way to leave Antarctica. They had to make it work. Is this what a real utopian project looks like after six or seven generations?

But honestly, one of the most fascinating aspects of the DVP is their material culture. As you might expect, their day-to-day existence is profoundly shaped by the environment they live in. Their houses are all heavy stone, designed to trap scarce heat, and arranged around the village halls as a windbreak against the dry katabatic gales that sweep the McMurdo Valleys clear of ice. Despite this being one of the driest locations on Earth, it’s still a better habitat for them than the glaciers of the Antarctic lowlands, or the rough, icy terrain of the mountains--here, you can actually build, and you don’t need skis and snowshoes to get around. But, as a consequence, much of their most important infrastructure is underground.

I don’t know if the ancestral DVP brought the right tools with them or if they scavenged them once here, but they have accumulated a small stockpile of laser borers, ultrasonic chisels, and crystalsteel digging equipment that they use to carve out underground chambers in the hills as meeting places and ritual sites. But they don’t do their agriculture there; that happens in networks of buried trenches just below the villages, where they grow cold-resistant mosses and lichens to supplement a meat-based diet, and what seems to be a form of genegineered fibergrass they use to weave their clothing and tapestries, and to make books.

Their art is very beautiful. Their coats, books, and tapestries--even their stone carvings--all depict elaborate lineate forms of plants and animals, inherited I suppose from ancestral memory, since none of the organisms in question are found in Antarctica. They also make images depicting the mountains, of course, and the sea, and the animals that live on the coast; even some of the coastal settlements, as seen from far off. They’re often abstracted, but these images are geographically grounded: they’re not just “generic mountains” or “generic coastline,” they’re specific mountains, specific coastlines, and they add up--if you are exposed to them every day of your life growing up--to something like a conceptual map of all of Victoria Land. It seems that if you dropped an average adult DVP individual anywhere from Oates Land to the Queen Elizabeth Range, they could probably find their way home, even during the dark months of winter.

(Oh! And the dark months! You’d think they’d be depressing, but I never imagined in my life I would see such a sight as the aurora australis, or even the clear polar stars! I can’t describe it to you. Maybe Leofric could, if I could do justice to his verse.)

They’re very communitarian, and great emphasis is placed on making sure no one goes without, but the price of that is, apparently, extremely elaborate dispute-resolution mechanisms; for a culture without courts, government, or attorneys, they are remarkably bureaucratic. Each physical object seems to have its own laws attached to it. Some may be shared by all objects of that type--for instance, if you need an electric firestarter, you always go to the house windward of yours to ask if they have one. If they don’t, you go to the next, and so on; firestarters pass from house to house, as needed, but only in one direction. Other objects may have completely unique rules. There is a knife with an elaborately carved handle meant to be used only by left-handed people. I don’t know why; nobody I asked knew, either. But that was the custom, and it was scrupulously obeyed. As a rule, the more elaborately decorated an object, the more particular the rules associated with it, but the elaboration of the object doesn’t seem to connote anything about the rules. It only marks it out as somehow special. The rules themselves are transmitted orally. All of these rules at bottom are about making sure that resources are evenly distributed--making sure nobody has to walk too far in bitterly cold weather to find a firestarter, for instance--and even the ones that don’t make sense now probably were created for good reason. For instance, the southpaw knife. Their knives for carving meat all have handles that curve in one way, to help separate flesh from bone, and I suspect that one is the result of a left-handed steelsmith getting fed up with with tools he couldn’t use very well. The blade is that of a carving-knife, though the handle attached to it is straight. The handle was probably later replaced when it broke, and somebody needed the knife for a different purpose--but the custom attached to it remained the same.

This system of sharing is, if anything, even more scrupulously observed when there’s a windfall. We went on a salvage expedition a month ago and brought back some much-needed supplies, and they spent days working out what would go where, first to each village and then, once we got back to the High Settlement, each house in each village--and even then, this was just what went to who first. Anything that’s not a finite supply, like food, will get passed from house to house. Leofric tells me that a few years ago, a whale--an entire blue whale, actually--beached itself to the north, and they had to have a weeklong assembly (on the beach, next to the whale, natch) to decide what do with every scrap of meat and bone. They still talk about the arguments that went down at the Whale Parliament sometimes (for which their word is hwaelthing, by the way. Literally it means exactly what it looks like: “whale-thing.”). Funny thing is, they also very carefully manage arguments in these discussions. That’s not normally the case--if two people have an argument and what to physically fight each other about it, that’s considered their business. But when it comes to disputes about food or metal or tools, everybody is very keen to show how Not Mad they are, even if they’re actually seething about it on the inside. And if voices get raised, people get hustled aside, and the whole matter is dropped completely until everybody has a chance to calm down. This looks like a system that was either deliberately designed to keep fights from breaking out and feelings getting permanently hurt, or one that sprung up after some nasty experiences of actual fights. I suspect the latter. It’s all very informal, but there’s a lot of social pressure that enforces it. The price for division and discord in an environment this hard to live in would be death, and I think all their social institutions are built around that reality.

I will admit, this has not been the easiest experience. I mean, there’s the almost dying part, and the part where all my cybernetics are broken, and I had a bad bout of something flulike a few weeks ago and almost died again, but I don’t actually mean the physical hardship. It is a more isolating experience than I thought it would be, being the lone outsider in such a close-knit community. Everyone knows everybody and everything, except me. They all have their own jokes and stories and long-running feuds, and they can communicate a great deal to one another with just a glance, and I’m left wondering what just happened when everybody laughs at something, or a fight breaks out. I have struggled sometimes to learn the language. I mean, I’ve had no other choice, and it’s amazing what you can learn when your survival depends on it, but even now I still sometimes find myself struggling to communicate ideas, or staying silent even when there is something I might want to say, just because I can’t find the words. It’s infuriating not being able to express yourself well, and maybe for good reason I sometimes think they all see me as this hapless idiot who almost got herself killed, who they have to put up with until the spring as a result.

Okay, I mean, I kind of am that. But I am also genuinely interested in their society, in the DVP as individuals, in their stories and their history. But I feel like the best I can hope for is being kind of a mascot. Or a well-meaning but dim-witted pet. A Labrador or something.

Not that I haven’t made friends. I would say Leofric is a friend. The salvagers--Eadwig and Andrac--they’re friends. And I seem to have won at least the grudging toleration of the ones like Aelfric who initially wanted to leave me to die. But sometimes I think I’ve made a connection, somehow bridged the unbridgeable gulf between my life experience and the world of the DVP, only to find out I’ve done no such thing. I thought Leofe was a friend; but now she’s not speaking to me, and she’s left the High Settlement for one of the other valleys. I don’t know why, and the others just shrug when I ask them.

Ugh. This is turning into whining. Now I know I’ll never send it. Sorry. It’s been a long day. It’s amazing how tired you can get when your muscles can’t rely on your augs to help them do shit.

But I need to find a way to bridge that gap. I mean really bridge it. Because I feel like I’m starting to understand something the DVP aren’t ready to hear. Their ancestors came to Antarctica at a time when the rest of the world wasn’t much interested in it. It was a wasteland, so sure, let’s treat it as an international, shared territory. Nobody goes there but scientists and the occasional tourist. And during the Collapse, not even that--Antarctica was truly empty for the first time in a hundred and fifty years when the ancestors of the DVP came to its shores. But it isn’t anymore. And it won’t ever be a real wasteland again. Every year the mining consortia move a little further down the Transantarctic Mountains. Every year a new outpost pops up on the coast, more ships come to Port Alexander, more icebreakers cut through the polar sea. Antarctica is warmer now that it’s been at any time in the past. Heck, without some global warming, I don’t think the Dry Valleys would be habitable. But that means more exposed rock, more open ground to build on, more people coming to the continent to work on the mining platforms or the offshore factories, and one day, I think, they’re going to come here.

What will the DVP do when that happens? This isn’t North Sentinel Island, which nobody ever goes to because there’s no reason. There’s gold in the hills here--the DVP make jewelry out of it--and maybe other precious metals, and you could build a geothermal station on Mount Erebus and power a small town, if you wanted to build some autofactories. The Antarctic Authority exists to promote “science and industry,” but with a big emphasis on industry. And by science they mostly mean, like, watching penguins bone and building telescopes at the South Pole. Not soft stuff like anthropology. And certainly not protecting three valleys full of cessionist oddballs whose parents had an unreasonable fondness for dead languages.

I think Dr. Wright knew this. I think maybe he tried to warn the DVP when he was here, but back then the danger was even further away. And it’s hard to get people to pay attention to danger that seems far away, even if it might be an existential threat. And when dealing with that danger would require you to completely change the only life you’d ever known… well, that’s a hard sell. The DVP don’t really like change. I can’t blame them. But one day things are going to change here, and if they’re not prepared for it, it could get really ugly, really fast. It’s one thing to shut yourself away when the world is ignoring you. It’s another when the world comes knocking.

If I think I can persuade them, I’m going to talk to the elders here, Aelfric and Wulf. Some of the DVP have had very fleeting contact with outsiders before me. I think one of them should come with me in the spring, as a sort of emissary. I’m not sure who they should talk to, yet. Maybe the Authority. Maybe somebody in Port Alexander’s local government? Or maybe we should just try to tell their story directly to the world. That might bring the DVP more attention than they’d like, but better a little good attention now than a lot of bad attention later. I would have asked Leofe--she’s smart, she’s tough, she could handle the culture shock--but that’s not an option now. Something to think about, anyway.

Well. I hope this letter finds the imaginary version of you well, my love to the imaginary family &c, hope the undergrads aren’t giving you too much trouble this year. If for some reason you do find this letter--like I freeze to death on my way to the weather station in September and they find this document on my corpse--please forgive my stubbornness, my insistence on going on this stupid trip, and any worry I’ve caused you as a result. And if I really am dead, please tell everybody I died doing something badass, like, I dunno, fighting a polar bear. I guess those are extinct and they never lived in Antarctica anyway, but something along those lines. Make it good.

All the best,

Kate

#tanadrin's fiction #*blows party horn*#sorry for the epistolary chapter #but it's a great way to do gratuitous expository worldbuilding

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wonderer-ru · 6 years ago

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my soul remembers us

☾ Taehyung|reader story

↳ genre: fluff and soft angst ↳ word count: 14.004 ↳ warnings: none ↳ a/n: fun fact. i wanted to finish writing this by Taehyung’s birthday… last year. so this has been a long time coming. i love this story very much, this is my favorite concept and i hope you enjoy. please, let me know what you think. oh, and there’s a little easter egg for those who read “under the spell”. happy new year!

⍣…your generation cracked a shell of something that was beyond one’s comprehension for thousands of years. What was made to be a matter of belief, religion and mysticism, took a form of the undeniable truth. Reincarnation. Yes, in your time, reincarnation was a scientifically proven fact…⍣

moodboard

☾ reincarnation au; soulmate au

Each generation had something that they thought was impossible at the beginning of their reign, yet later it sneaked into reality with such smoothness, the discovery was welcomed almost too nonchalantly to be fair. Some thought video phones were out of a fairytale, but decades later they found themselves using those daily, without a second thought or the initial feeling of novelty. That’s how progress worked, you thought. The most farsighted people would just stop wondering and fantasizing, deciding to bring unimaginable things to their tangibility instead. Sometimes, it was scary how quickly those miracles became nothing more than mundane accessories in people’s routine lives.

You hoped it wouldn’t happen to this particular notion, because your generation cracked a shell of something that was beyond one’s comprehension for thousands of years. What was made to be a matter of belief, religion and mysticism, took a form of the undeniable truth. Reincarnation. Yes, in your time, reincarnation was a scientifically proven fact, that also helped in explaining several psychological phenomena; many of which were previously considered to be purely trauma-based. How could this become ordinary? Admittedly, the break through was still fresh in society’s minds, so you didn’t worry about its oblivion. Not yet.

Nowadays, the theurgic discovery nested right in the sweet spot: the government just started to provide financials for research, while keeping the scientific details away from the general public, therefore the concept was still too vague for the scammers to get their hands on it. Sure, mediums offered a look into previous lives long before that, but now they strived to cash on the boost that would inevitably occur, forging some science degrees along the way. The good old psychic shtick was in the past. Claiming you can talk to the dead in a dimly lit room wouldn’t roll anymore. No, people would ask you for your diploma now.

And while grifters tried to figure it out, clinics were built, special nursing courses and programs were organized, and you were fortunate enough to get into one. Studying felt like constant research, as if you were a part of developing this new knowledge, and it felt invigorating. You were learning aspects of reincarnation right as they were uncovered, and isn’t it the best way to become a specialist on the subject? Every piece of information was cherished by everyone around you, so you couldn’t help but stock those close to your heart as well. It all became even more surreal, when you found out that your first internship would be spent under the mentoring hand of none other than the man himself. Dr. Kim Namjoon. A young genius, only a couple of years older than you, that shook the world with his findings and now, naturally, was leading as many research teams as he could handle. The rest still worked with his careful oversight.

The growing amount of brand new possibilities and fields of research seemed overwhelming at times, yet there was one phenomenon that attracted the most attention. Confabulation. A disturbance of memory that used to be defined as the production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive. Now - dictionaries with this definition in them could be thrown away, because confabulation was currently known as “the glimpse into one’s past life”. Not really scientific yet, but, yes, those “fabricated” memories were proven to be very real memories that the soul experienced in one of its past incarnations.

People’s confabulations ranged from subtle alterations to bizarre fabrications, and - what’s even more fascinating - those people were generally very confident about their recollections, despite contradictory evidence. That’s why the subjects didn’t bat an eye at the contact with something much more modern than their previous self would be used to. The lucky peculiarity made Dr. Kim’s research much easier and a lot less expensive. After all, it would be highly inconvenient, if the doctors had to build entire eras around their patients - probably separate hospitals for people from certain decades - just for the results to be somewhat valid. It was crucial to keep people of interest calm and undisturbed, so, fortunately, they didn’t freak out when their soul from the 1920’s suddenly woke up hundreds of years later.

Surely, at some point, maybe half a century into the future, fruits of this work will become widely accessible - to wealthy people first, then to common folk - providing everyone with a peep into their distant adventures. Today, however, the thoughts of building any sort of business based on reincarnation were strictly put on hold, at least until Dr. Kim and his team figure out the safest way of putting a person into the state of paramnesia and, most importantly, bringing them out of it. The latter posed as a tougher task, because, at this stage of research, all existing records showed that patients could be stuck in ‘confabulation’ for, apparently, only God knows how long. From days to months, to even years. No trace of noticeable patterns or correlations.

“We have a new patient today,” Dr. Kim stopped in front of another hospital room, and you almost bumped into him, a little too intently scrabbling away in your writing pad. Namjoon (not that you could call him by his name) always had five to seven interns following him during rounds, because “I don’t know if you’ve gathered enough information about me, but I only have two eyes and one brain. I’d rather have all that, but times five. Gross, I agree. Plus, the surgery would cost a fortune. So I dutifully ask of you, interns, the fresh blood of this place, to be my extra eyes, brains, hands. The hospital will provide you with pens and paper. Quantity of your notes could result in quality of our overall data”. Dr. Kim was well aware that he couldn’t catch every single detail by himself - especially since he was the one asking questions - so he took all the help possible, which spoke to his humble nature. The man just really wanted to move forward with his discovery.

But, despite leading the most advanced scientific program in the world, he was quite old fashioned when it came to interacting with patients. Dr. Kim refused to install any hidden cameras in their rooms, because having interns by his side gave him several unique points of view on what his patients said and how they acted; which was priceless, unlike the equipment that would only lower his eyes sight in the end. Have you seen the quality of those videos? One-way mirrors were also unacceptable, as they would turn any conversation into interrogation, and the sheer vibe of the room could make patients feel uneasy. Not to mention the expenses that this kind of purchase would cause. Government could only help to a certain extent, and independent sponsors still found the research too risky and unreliable to invest into.

“I was informed that this case is somewhat special. The patient correctly recalled his name, which could mean one of two things: he just, for some unknown reason, remembered his current name, or, he had the same exact name in his past life. That we won’t be able to determine with certainty until he snaps out of it, I guess.”

“Is it possible that he has kept more memories of his present life? Of course, but we’ll have to wait and see. So,” Dr. Kim took the chart from a wall pocket and looked over it. “Kim Taehyung. Twenty three years old. Male. Car accident. Has a couple of bruised ribs and, of course, a head injury. The decade his soul is currently in: 1960s,” as you might have noticed, Dr. Kim favored answering questions before they were asked, which honestly made things easier, since your preference consisted of staying quiet, observing and writing things down. “You will all be given additional files with more information about him, what his family and friends could provide. Take your notes carefully, so later you can potentially point out similarities between his past and current lifetimes.”

You nodded, along with four other interns, and followed Dr. Kim into the room, laying out some preparatory work on the blank piece of paper: his name, today’s date and the date his soul thinks it is. As you walked in and proceeded to take your usual spot in the corner of the room, your gaze brushed the patient’s figure on the bed, noticing a book in his hand. A book that, according to his perspective of time, would be written half a century later, so, basically, the man was reading a story form the future and didn’t even know it. You made a note of it, even though it wasn’t your main task.

This late into the internship, you and your group-mates have made up a system where each intern had only a couple of aspects of the conversation to document. No one had to split their focus, and, at the end, you’d exchange notes to create the complete picture. Some had to pay close attention to patients’ nonverbal behavior, some listened to their voice and intonations. Your job was to write down the exact words that were said. That’s why you didn’t bother with getting a better place to stand, to look at the young man. Your ears would work perfectly fine from the corner. You were used to carrying this role by now, since it was pretty much the same group of interns every time, and everyone has settled into their groove. Although, maybe, you should’ve switched more often, because catching the words and writing them down became a chain of mindless, automatic operations. It didn’t matter what the conversation was about. You’d analyze everything later, when the puzzle is assembled.

Dr. Kim went through his usual set of questions - nothing specific, yet; minimal usage of modern terminology; just general check up - but, a couple of minutes in, his voice acquired lightness that was slightly out of character, and you even heard Namjoon laugh. Huh. This guy must be very amusing. The thought left your mind as soon as it entered, and you continued to be oblivious to the patient’s velvety voice, or the way a wide boxy grin made his eyes disappear. Words, words, words. You were only concerned with words, not noticing that the room was already charmed and completely in love with Kim Taehyung. Maybe, you’ll feel the same, once you read back everything that’s been written in the past ten minutes.

However, your fluent handwriting suddenly falters when Dr. Kim is interrupted mid sentence.

“Y/N?”

Your own name was left unfinished under the pen as your eyes widened in realization. The patient just called you, and, judging by the tone of his voice, he was pleasantly surprised. You looked up to find every gaze in the room turned in your direction. Taehyung was smiling, and, suddenly, you were very aware of him. Shouldn’t have ignored his presence before, because now it was a bit overwhelming. And there’s that flitting feeling... You’d call it a déjà vu, but it would contradict Dr. Kim’s newest theory. He thought that the concept of “déjà vu” was about alternative universes, not about past lives. According to him, déjà vu appears when you experience something that your alternative self lived through a bit earlier. As if they went through life a little faster, but in a moment of deja vu you catch up to them, hit the same point in time and space, then go your barely separate ways. Anyway...

You turned to Namjoon - who looked surprised, but also intrigued - hoping that your eyes screamed for help obviously enough.

“I didn’t realize that they’ve brought me to your hospital,” the man seemed very excited by the encounter, so, at least, he liked you. But how the hell did he know you at all? You opened your mouth (that appeared to be rid of any moisture) to say something, but Namjoon stepped in; probably to prevent you from answering with anything that could confuse or disturb the patient.

“Excuse me, Taehyung. Can I steal your...?” Dr. Kim paused, expecting for Taehyung to finish the sentence, and - oh boy - he did.

“Fiancée,” the man replied happily, a somewhat prideful look adoring his features. Meanwhile, your ability to breathe was packing its bags, ready to travel. A soft gasp - that sounded a lot like ‘fiancée’ - escaped your lips, and you felt someone’s hand on your back, pushing you off the wall. When did you lean against it? Now that you decided to concentrate on it - your legs were obviously shaking.

“Fiancée,” Dr. Kim repeated, physically pushing you out of the room, because your body didn’t seem to cooperate under the severe shock. You could vaguely - very, very... very vaguely - understand what all of it meant, but the right pieces just bounced off each other, not clicking yet. “Fascinating. We’ll be right back,” Namjoon ushered you out, hoping that Taehyung didn’t find your terrified state too suspicious. He couldn’t let this chance go to waste, because for Dr. Kim everything clicked the moment his patient called your name.

“Y/N, do you know him?” he had to make sure that in this life you were absolute strangers. Your lungs came from their brief vacation and worked with full force, as you frantically tried to remember seeing Kim Taehyung’s face before. No memory came up, and, sure, you could forget a face, but certainly not the fact that you were engaged to said face. So you shook your head, confidently enough for Dr. Kim to light up with delight and anticipation. A new discovery was on the way.

“No, I’ve never seen him, and I am not his fiancée,” you denied the fact as if it was an outrageous accusation, when, in reality, everyone knew that the whole thing was just a trick, played on Taehyung by his own fogged mind.

“That’s excellent!” Namjoon was practically jumping on the spot, while your confusion slowly wore off. Very slowly.

“Excellent? Wha- why, why? Why would you-? I wouldn’t use that wo- ...Oh,” and then it hit you. “OH! It means that he knew me in his past life! Holy sh-“

“Yes, precisely! And it also means that you had the same name in your past life, which means that he probably did too!” Dr. Kim was hitting you with conclusions and calculations - rapid fire style - so your inner scientist was simply ecstatic, yet overwhelmed and a bit dizzy. “And it also means that you physically look the same as your previous self! This is unprecedented! You have to play along!” you were nodding along to everything Namjoon was saying. He was so enthusiastic and fired up, it was infectious. But wait-

“Wha- What?!” did you hear him right? “Play along as in... I have to pretend to be his fiancée?” Namjoon exhaled to calm himself down from excitement, before attempting to calm you down from panicking. His hands squeezed your shoulders, but Dr. Kim soon found that it wasn’t enough to ground you. “I have to do everything that it implies? I have to pretend... to be in love?” you whispered the word ‘love’ like it was something forbidden; like faking love is the most sinful and horrible crime to commit.

“Y/N, my dear Y/N, please, hear me out,” Namjoon’s hands altered to cradle your face, and he looked into your eyes as if you were the only one who could help him, save him; like you were the only person that mattered right now, and if the context of his pleas was any less professional, you’d feel weak in the knees. It made sense, though. Dr. Kim was in love with scientific progress, and you were the embodiment of it in that fateful moment. “We can’t destroy his world right now, because we don’t know- ...we can’t predict what it could possibly do to his mind. It could result in a catastrophe. But, more than that, just- ...just imagine how much we can uncover. You already gave me a lot just by standing in the corner of that room. Do this too, please. It could change everything.”

“I... I am not a good actress. And I don’t know anything about him... about us in his... damn it! Our past life. What if he figures it out?” to be completely honest, you were convinced the moment Namjoon started speaking. You’ve never seen anyone so determined and committed. It truly was the work of his life. Right now, your frightened mind just scrambled for more reassurance that, you knew, he could give you.

“It won’t matter to him. You know as well as I do that these patients don’t get suspicious about things ‘not adding up’. You just have to act like you know him and that, yes, you are a woman in love, about to marry the man of her dreams,” Dr. Kim was still pretty close, so you pealed his hands off your face, in case Taehyung came out of his room. He shouldn’t see you in a position that looks far from innocent. Was he a jealous type? Well, you were already in that mindset, might as well... Your head hit the wall with a quiet knock, and you closed your eyes, thinking things over one last time.

“You don’t seem like the kind of student that would have a crush on their professor, so I won’t ask you to do this for me... unless,” he stretched out the sentence, narrowing eyes at you. Suspicion was real. “...you do have a... crush on me?” you snorted at that. His cluelessness was truly adorable. He obviously didn’t know or care about the proper navigation of someone’s romantic advances. And your reaction to it - as if it was such a ridiculous implication (after all, it wasn’t far fetched at all, because a lot of students did have a crush on him) - didn’t hurt the man, even though he said “ouch”. “Okay, then do it for science, Y/N, because I know you care.”

Dr. Kim lifted his hand, and you were split between rolling your eyes and squealing with joy. Here goes nothing.

“For science,” your fist bumped into his, and that sealed it. You were officially science bros with Kim Namjoon.

...

“Were you really ready to use poor girl’s affection towards you? For your own benefit? Shame on you, Dr. Kim.”

“Uhh, not for my benefit? For science?”

...And you were officially engaged to Kim Taehyung.

The hospital staff was immediately informed of your unusual situation, and not being the only one who had to “play along” felt somewhat relaxing. Moving forward, for Taehyung and everyone else (in Taehyung’s presence) you were just a nurse that worked exhausting shifts daily and fulfilled her duties by caring for all sorts of patients. Now you practically lived at the hospital, not only because nurses in the 60s did that, but because Dr. Kim advised you to spend as much time with your new-old fiancé as you could.

You felt like a government spy, and Taehyung was your mission. In some ways, it was true. You were his lovely bride’s evil tween, and your task was to get close to him, because he held some important secrets. Dramatic, yet strangely accurate. His personal file - that also comprised everyone’s notes on the man - served as your desk book, and his parents’ narrative was your bedtime story. You were relieved to find that Taehyung was single, even though his current life didn’t mean a great deal at the moment. The fact that there wasn’t a romantic partner in sight eased your mind considerably. Directing “heart eyes” (even fake ones) at someone else’s lover would be guilt-inducing, surely. You just hoped that his family and friends were informed of his personal life as well as they thought.

This noble scientific swindle was destined to start awkwardly, so you were having an out-of-body experience during every conversation with Taehyung. Lookers-on see most of the game, and you could imagine how easy it was to point out the stiffness of your posture or the rehearsed nature of your sentences. Your own tongue felt heavy and foreign as it moved in your mouth, and, at one point, Namjoon seriously considered paying for acting classes. He couldn’t have you compromising the “mission” by planting seeds of suspicion into Taehyung’s mind. Admittedly, it would be really hard - or even impossible - to do, but your behavior around the patient was just that unnatural and forced.

By good fortune, Taehyung was completely oblivious to your struggles with communication, and, as irony would have it, played a crucial part in making the whole situation less tense. Of course, he did it without even realizing his own contributions to the success of Dr. Kim’s research. With time, you stopped dreading the interaction and your own heavy-handedness, because, when it came down to it, Taehyung was really easy and fun to be around. He had a gift of making people feel joyous, always ready to spark or endure some benignant foolishness. His ardour was infectious, and the man rarely failed in making you laugh.

One month into the “relationship”, you could unhesitatingly confirm that Taehyung was a sweet and caring boyfriend. More than that, you were convinced that the mastermind behind the term “puppy love” was inspired by the look on Taehyung’s face whenever he zoned out, staring at his fiancée - in this case, you - and it had nothing to do with teenagers being in love. The man was quite affectionate (note: understatement of the millennium), and if, at first, his urge to be close to you was restrained by the injuries and prescribed bed rest, now - you could barely find an empty corner and write your daily report for Namjoon. You had to do it while Taehyung was asleep, which wasn’t particularly problematic, since the boy always nudged you to take a nap on his lap the next day, while he read on a bench in the garden. Taehyung tied your tiredness to night shifts, you imagined.

Nonetheless, being his significant other was challenging in unexpected ways, so you still used Taehyung’s injuries as a protective barrier. The bruise on his bottom lip was pretty severe, so kisses were off the table, which saddened the man greatly. Plus, the complete healing was constantly postponed, because Taehyung would always cut the wound open by smiling widely at something cute you did. When an older nurse scolded the boy for making her tend to his poor lip again and again ( ...and again), Taehyung only shrugged and said that his fiancée was simply too adorable and he couldn’t help it. So. No kisses. Less smiling. Once, though, he turned his head at the right time - just as you leaned in to leave a peck on his cheek - resulting in your lips brushing the corner of Taehyung’s mouth, and it was the closest he got to lip locking with you. That little “accident” got the man so excited, he didn’t beg for kisses that week at all.

It was much harder to deprive him of cuddles, though. Not because there were no excuses to avoid them. He had a couple of broken ribs, and it would be painful to even hug tightly. Pushing the man away, keeping him at the arm’s length turned out to be emotionally exhausting and heartbreaking, because Taehyung didn’t hesitate to regularly remind you of how much he loved all the snuggles and cuddles, and how desperately he missed feeling that sort of closeness with you. Every time you left his side, so he could rest, Taehyung pouted playfully, not willing to let go and fall asleep just yet. On more occasions than your heart would like to admit, you gave in - just a little, but it was a big victory for him - and kissed Taehyung’s forehead, not missing the way he sighed deeply and contentedly as your lips pressed to his skin. The boy’s eyes always appeared a little more dreary when you pulled away, and he never omitted a chance to hold onto your hand for a second longer, before giving you a tight smile and a quiet “goodnight, beautiful”. The image never failed to create a lump in your throat. He deserved much more affection in return, but the “you” that could give it to him was long gone.

Your debt to him was becoming unmeasurable by the day, because, through Taehyung, you could also get a glimpse into your past life, without having to injure your head. It was a truly priceless gift, but its destiny was unknown and impossible to predict. Will Taehyung remember any of your time together after he “wakes up”? Will he remember all the love he spent? All the memories of you he shared? There was no way to tell with certainty. Most patients didn’t recall their “confabulation period” at all. They were left with completely blank pages, and no stories to fill those with. Being in a coma would probably be more entertaining and colorful. Yet, some lucky people remembered parts of different lengths. An even smaller percentage of patients - remembered everything.

You didn’t know for which outcome to hope, but you’d be okay with anything as long as Taehyung didn’t feel sad or hurt, or the wrong kind of foolish for giving away so much of himself; all to someone who failed to appreciate that fraction of time with him for what it was: a beautiful and unselfish gift of love. Sometimes you thought that it was your only chance to be loved like that... in this life.

“The 60s you” was obviously a nurse, but you kept discovering new details about her with every visit to Taehyung’s memory bank. He loved reminiscing about the most trivial things, and even the first time he saw you brush your teeth in the morning was special. That’s when Taehyung knew that you felt like home to him. Well, good for you and your notes to Dr. Kim, who was quite pleased with how detailed your reports were. He did point out that the way you wrote about Taehyung felt more... inspired - less formal and more poetic - though, it didn’t come as a surprise to you, because, with time, you became significantly more fascinated with your-past-self’s future husband... if that makes sense.

Kim Taehyung was a pilot, which slightly correlated with his current occupation: aeronautical engineer; although, it didn’t cover solely planes in your time. He seemed to really love the sky, and it reflected in his poetry preferences. Taehyung read and recited poems about the skies the most, be it the blue and fresh early morning or the mysterious starry night that rhymed within their lines. The “hopeless romantic” side of him was utterly endearing, which is why you struggled to hide your shock when his other passion was revealed. Your-60s-self was probably aware of it, so you couldn’t really react when Taehyung confessed that he missed street fighting almost as much as flying. It was hard to imagine Taehyung expressing any sort of aggression, but that particular hobby of his just proved that everyone needed an outlet. The darkness had to go somewhere, and the man not only let it out away from you or the job, but also got some trophies (or prize money) for it.

Later you found out that Taehyung was into a more... civil form of competing. Yes, it was still violent, but somewhat organized and restricted by a set of rules, which made the whole thing less gruesome in your mind. Taehyung was also strangely amazed at how ironic the cause of his injuries was: with duties and interests as dangerous as flying a plane and street fighting, he managed to be knocked out by a plain car crash. He talked about all of it with such ease that the very thing that should’ve pushed you away, made you distant, brought you a new appreciation for the love you once had for each other. Taehyung trusted you enough to let in on that secret, and you loved him enough to except that dangerous hobby of his. You must’ve been sure that he was worth it.

Yet, while you cherished the love itself, your young heart still couldn’t grasp what your old soul already knew, already lived. Multiple times, it could be. What could create a bond so strong, so powerful that it surfaced through Taehyung several lifetimes later? You couldn’t find the answer with the way you’ve been approaching the mystery so far. Your mind was so completely focused on the words that came out of Taehyung’s mouth, you failed to look past them. Subliminal messages got lost between the lines, because the information for research was your priority. And, even though Dr. Kim praised your reports, there were things about Taehyung that skipped your attention. Some of them were gearing up to hit you in the face pretty soon.

It was a very busy day at the hospital. Several new patients arrived, all with signs of confabulation, but their physical injuries had to be treated first, which made all the real nurses occupied and unavailable to do Taehyung’s scheduled re-bandaging. You’ve seen it done enough times on different patients to know the drill, so you didn’t think twice before agreeing to perform the procedure on your fiancé. Come to think of it, you were never present when his bandages were changed. Every time you went to remind him or ask, he’d already done it.

“Y/N?! What- What are you doing here?” Taehyung stuttered, wide-eyed, as you burst into his room with fresh bandages and other necessary supplies in hands. The man looked panicked, but you decided to write it off as the initial surprise.

“I will be changing your bandages today,” you practically sang and turned to the table for preparations, missing the way your uncharacteristically cheerful mood went completely unnoticed by Taehyung... ironically. On any other day he would eagerly channel, harbor and try his gosh-darn best to increase that rare excited lilt in your voice. He’d strive to make it last as long as possible... Not today, though.

“Are- Are you sure no one else can do it?” the man kept stumbling over his words, voice sounding painfully small, but it still wasn’t enough for you to get suspicious.

“Why? Don’t you trust me? I’m hurt,” you feigned offense, playful to a fault, but the tease went right over Taehyung’s head, who appeared oblivious and rushed to assure you that-

“No, no. Of course, I trust you...,” the sentence faded away as if he mumbled it under his breath, to himself, and the words felt so heavy with worry and nervousness that your movements faded as well, brows furrowing in confusion. You slowly turned to look at him - really look at him - for the first time since stepping into the room. The man before you clearly couldn’t decide what to do with his body, constantly shifting on the bed, not knowing where to place his hands or how to successfully escape your gaze... or his own skin, it seemed. Eventually, Taehyung crossed his arms, protectively hugging himself. You’ve never seen him so tense.

“Tae? Are you sure you’re alright? I’ve seen you shirtless... right?” you chuckled humorlessly, not even buying that that could be the reason for his behavior. Or could it? Why was he acting like this? Was your marriage arranged? Did you agree not to have sex before the wedding? It seemed- felt unlikely, but, before you could spiral into a full on panic mode, he answered...

“Yeah! ... Yeah, let’s just- let’s just do it,” he swallowed, reaching for the hem of his shirt with trembling fingers. You didn’t realize you held your breath until it whooshed out, all at once, at the sight of his bare torso.

In that moment, certain, relatively ordinary for a hospital patient phrases came rushing back to you. “I miss fighting, but with the way my body aches, it feels like I still do it every day”, Taehyung would joke, and your psychoanalytic brain would only highlight the ‘i miss fighting’ part of it, because that gave you new (and quite shocking) information. Now, though, you cursed at your own ability to pay attention to all the wrong details, because it should’ve been obvious. He was in pain.

You stepped closer, taking in all the bruises that covered his upper body. If they were fading now, what was it like before? The mere thought of it and the flashing images made you lightheaded, though they weren’t the main reason why your knees hit the floor in front of him.

“Taehyung-,“ you gasped, reaching out to touch his stomach gently. The man hissed at the sting, but you didn’t move your hand away, only willed it to be even gentler. His presence was a miracle in more ways than one now, because he shouldn’t have survived a crash that left him in so many shades of purple. Not only his soul was a traveler, but his body seemed to have gone through so much as well.

“I didn’t want you to see this,” the man sighed and shook his head in defeat, not looking up to meet your eyes that, he imagined, were wide with horror. They were.

You blinked away the tears, stood up and quickly moved to get the bandages. Suddenly, you wished they were made from the softest material imaginable. They weren’t, but it just meant that you and your hands had to be as careful as ever. Butterfly wings had to have nothing on your fingers. Without realizing it, you promised yourself that he wouldn’t feel a thing as you worked.

Unfortunately, like most things, it was easier said than done, and, even though, you stepped in Taehyung’s direction with determination to soothe his aching body, your lack of experience with “real” nursing tasks was bound to ruin the plan. You weren’t sure what kind of pressure to apply or what was the best way to wrap bandages around his torso, which, combined with the overall painful nature of the procedure, only interrupted the quietness of the room with Taehyung’s grunts and hisses, always followed by his strained “it’s okay, keep going”. Your hands froze every time he made a distressed sound, but, when a number of them crossed what seemed like a hundred, you only wished to finish faster.

The less bandages there were left - the more concentrated you became, finally finding your groove. Later, it would feel like an out of body experience. Like you’ve done this before, or, rather, your soul did, and it took the reigns in that moment, not asking for permission. You moved around Taehyung with much more swiftness, getting lost in your own repetitive movements. One roll of stretchy fabric later, you were ready to tie the final knot over his right shoulder. Taehyung moaned in pain, again, when you applied more pressure to make the knot tighter, and the next words escaped your mouth before you could think about it.

“I’m sorry, baby. It’s almost done,” your soul seemed to take over you completely. The phrase slipped out so naturally, you appeared right where he was - in your shared past life. Taehyung turned to look at you; so fast, you thought you heard his neck crack. And you realized why the man was stunned, yet, strangely, you didn’t feel the urge to be surprised about it as well. This moment felt too right to ruin it with stuttering excuses.

“What?” you asked innocently, referring to his wide eyes and the fact that his mouth was hanging open. The boy blinked a couple of times, still unmoving, but when you shrugged and moved again to check if the bandages were wrapped around him comfortably, Taehyung snapped out of it.

“You didn’t call me that- baby in awhile,” he paused, looking down at his lap. “I missed it,” Taehyung wished you didn’t say it now; not when he felt so undeserving of it. From where you were standing, though, he deserved to be called the sweetest of names all year long.

You circled the bed to stand in front of him. When Taehyung didn’t look up, guilt radiating off of him, your fingers reached for his chin to gently brush and tilt it up. Your eyes locked with his, and you felt your soul flutter... No. You felt your soul shudder as it desperately gulped for air after being suffocated under miles and miles of water for the longest time. You guessed, it was because you looked at him with a clear, unselfish purpose for the very first time.

“Don’t hide things like that from me again,” you said - quietly, yet firmly - right before your throat started to tighten with emotions under the intensity of his gaze. He looked back earnestly, like he couldn’t believe the sight. He couldn’t believe that he got to see you like that: brave and terrified, determined and vulnerable. So beautiful. Still, he didn’t deserve it. But he would take in every detail, until his own eyes would start to water, matching yours. After all, he was just as terrified and just as brave as you were. Just as beautiful.

The air was charged with rawest intimacy, yet, it felt empty. Not void of emotion or meaning, no. Quite the opposite. It simply felt freeing. Like you could spread your arms and spin, and you wouldn’t bump into a bed, a table, chairs. Your wild limbs wouldn’t touch a thing. You didn’t dare move and explore this vacuum, though, because, when it came down to it, you’d much rather spend every moment of that freedom next to him. You were zoned in on each other. Cocooned in this blissful nothingness that was supposed to make you shiver, make your skin crawl, and still, you felt warm... like your souls were hugging.

Suddenly, it wasn’t enough, and soon Taehyung’s hands were on your waist, guiding you closer. Your shaky knees nearly buckled, when the man buried his face in your stomach, wrapping the whole length of his arms around you and holding you tightly. A bated gasp escaped your lungs, but even your heartbeat slowed down and got quiet as soon as you realized that Taehyung was mumbling something into the material of your white coat. You could tell by the waves of warm air spreading against your belly and his lips moving to let it out. It tickled a little, but you managed to make out a couple of phrases. “I’m sorry” and “I won’t”.

In that moment, you felt beyond any time any place. It was scary and felt so immeasurably bigger than both of you. Did Taehyung sense it as well? Did his soul? Your fingers reached for his hair, running through it, and you felt an exhale against your core - trembling with relief - like he was going crazy without your touch, and now was on the verge of insanity, because he finally felt it. You smiled, letting the tears fall freely on top of his head. Your mind wasn’t quite set on why you felt like crying for hours. Were you just deprived of such pure human contact for so long, or was your soul crying in a mix of pain and happiness at having him so close again?

“You worry about me so much as it is. I didn’t want to add to it,” Taehyung pulled away a little, his chin still attached to you, and looked up. He seemed miserable and exhausted, making you wonder if he felt this way too often lately and was just really good at hiding it. But then, from a different perspective, he looked at ease and, somehow, younger. His eyes appeared less clouded, almost crystalline, and, for what it’s worth, you were happy that Taehyung didn’t have to mask his feelings anymore. Not from you. For as long as this incarnation of him would stay here.

“You are a miracle,” you whispered as your fingers left his hair, sliding down to cradle his face instead. This phrase belonged to multiple versions of you - to “the scientists” you, to “the 60s nurse” you, to “the fiancée” you - but, ultimately, it belonged to your soul. Taehyung’s eyes widened for a split second, giving away his surprise at your words, but then a brilliant smile spread across the man’s features. He smiled like he realized something you didn’t, you couldn’t, because he was in this relationship with you for much longer, so he studied you that much closer. Now, it seemed ridiculous that you ever felt more aware of things than him, when you only knew one thing - his condition - and Taehyung has lived years by your side.

“I missed you calling me that too,” he said teasingly and placed a quick kiss to the inner side of your wrist. You said that to him before? Wow, you really did, didn’t you? Of course. “Although, it would usually be ‘you are my miracle’, but we’ll get there again.”

Again. So he noticed the change, the setback. He felt the distance you’ve put between them. Taehyung might have been oblivious to the fact that the books he read were from another century, but he was attuned to you and your moods this whole time. Did your behavior confuse him? How did he explain it to himself? Did he suspect that something wasn’t right? Just like that, the research was on your mind again...

And, just like that, you also realized that that research wouldn’t be your priority anymore when it came to Taehyung. Taehyung himself would become your main focus. Not only his words would concern you, not only the information he gives you to fill out reports, but his feelings, his well-being, his heart.

You promised yourself to keep Taehyung’s heart safe, dreading the fact that he was probably right. You will get there. One day, you will want to call him yours, and that will become your downfall.

After what could only be described as a life changing experience you felt the shift. You felt your soul move for Taehyung whenever he was near. It arched stubbornly towards his soul, kicking and screaming, like it wanted to hug its newfound lover again. You felt your heart beat faster every time he smiled at you. This relationship danced on the verge of being too real for comfort and was destined to end in a catastrophe, given the speed at which your affection for Taehyung was growing. Hell, sometimes you had to physically pinch yourself to keep from daydreaming about your shared past life. You found yourself wondering, quite frequently, if those versions of the two of you really loved each other till their dying days. Or did they divorce years later? No, that didn’t feel right. Could you Google that?

It didn’t help that Taehyung felt the shift as well. He started to initiate more physical contact without fearing your rejection, and you didn’t have it in you to push him away anymore. So you just held you breath every time his hand casually slid down your back and stayed on the small of it, all while he quietly watched you fill out fake reports at the nursing station. Eventually, seeing your frustration with the task, he’d start to rub your lower back in soothing circles, which made you relax almost instantly. It’s like he knew exactly what you needed... He knew you.

Sometimes (and it started to happen more often as the time went on), you forgot to separate your past and present lives from each other, eagerly listening to Taehyung’s stories like they were all a part your grand character ark. You saw yourself as the manifestation of all the previous incarnations, finding that you always agreed with your own views on life and love, and the world... however different those worlds may have been.

You grew more curious with each passing day, gradually becoming fascinated not only with Taehyung, but with his version of you. You liked her. She seemed wiser then than you were now, and you wondered which path she took to become that at this age. She was impressive. A lifetime ago “you” had enough courage to change your career’s direction halfway through college, from journalism to medicine, realizing you wanted to take care of people the way you helped Taehyung through some rough fighting aftermaths. You still loved to do research and write, and the boy confessed that watching you mull over the right order of words was very calming.

At least, “the current you” was wise enough to bite her tongue and not ask Taehyung and excessive amount of questions... most of the time. Yes, he wouldn’t bet an eye and just rationalize your curiosity, coming up with an explanation on his own (you had a feeling that he often settled on “a semi-subtle check-up of his memory for a medical record”), but Namjoon gave you specific instructions that you had to follow... or try to follow. It was hard when Taehyung lit up like a Christmas tree every time you answered “fine” to his question of “how are you today, beautiful?” That’s an odd reaction, right? So you had to ask. As it turned out, a couple of years ago you and Taehyung came to a conclusion that being “fine” is way better than being “great! excellent! happy!” Why? Because every time you feel happy, inevitably, you also feel that ounce of fear that that feeling will soon end.

“I am always a little scared when I’m with you, though,” he confessed, and you felt your heart skip a bit. That goddamn charmer! What was even more infuriating is his complete obliviousness to the fact that one of the most romantic and smooth lines just came out of his mouth. Taehyung simply kept watching you with a gentle smile on his lips, absolutely loving the way you didn’t seem to know what to do with yourself. You kept avoiding his gaze, looking everywhere, but mostly at your lap. You were blushing furiously, all the way to the tips of your ears. And you were smiling so wide, you had to bite down on your lip to suppress it. Your painfully endearing shyness seemed to have awakened a strange sense of déjà vu within him, and you heard Taehyung hum softly beside you.

“What?” you asked, finally being able to look at him directly.

“I don’t know,” the man shrugged, reaching out to play with your hair. “Somehow, it just felt like when we first started dating.”

A sudden gust of nostalgia for something you’ve never known, never experienced hit you in the chest, quickly spreading to engulf your whole body and making you gasp in surprise. Anemoia’s the word, right? Dr. Kim was writing a paper on it at the moment. You could definitely help him with some interesting insight now, because your entire being was lovingly placed into another time and space. Almost the way a song that played at your prom takes you back to the night, so your body is momentarily tricked into believing that you are actually there.

Only it wasn’t a song this time, it was a person. It was Taehyung that lead you to that feeling and made it last for more than a split second. You could taste the difference on the tip of your tongue as if the air around you really shifted into something tangible and full of memories. And you remembered how it felt to simply exist back then. How it felt to be you, living in your skin in another time... And it was your second or third date, yet you could still feel the butterflies just looking at him. Faint jazz music suddenly reached your ears, and you wanted to hum a tune that you’ve never heard before.

Was it where Taehyung’s mind went? Did you feel the right things? You couldn’t possibly be sure, but nostalgia was never this striking or lasted that long.

“You fully intend to keep making me fall for you, don’t you?” Taehyung whispered mindlessly, as if to himself, but the implication left you more breathless then seemed possible. There was a negative amount of air in your lungs now. “Over and over again,” he was closer somehow, fingers brushing your neck without a specific intention. He was just submitting to the pull he always felt near you. The one that makes you move and touch, and watch intently. It’s when you register every drop of her eyelashes, yet you don’t seem to notice yourself leaning in. The movement is barely there, but oh wow, it’s impactful. “I have to say, I don’t mind one bit.”

You feel his words on your lips now. They are full of breath that you lack, and it would be almost too delicious to make him share it. You had the chance to be selfish in the most acceptable and pleasant way. But... You simply wouldn’t come back from it. You would be going for seconds every chance you got. But...

You make him fall deeper in love? This you? This present-time-you? The thought was dangerous with how flattering it was, making your heart stutter. Taehyung’s eyes were already closed and he was angling his head slightly, looking like the angel he is. Gentle, even if a little impatient. Meanwhile, you felt like a mess. Overwhelmed and very conflicted. You swallowed and shut your eyes tightly, already scowling at what you were about to do. And when did your breath come back, making your chest heave this heavily?

“Tae?”

“Yes?” he sounded so shaken by mere anticipation, you had to keep yourself from whining and giving in. It was just cruel how undeniable his need for you was.

“I need to go back to work,” the broken exhale that he let out was bound to haunt your dreams. You didn’t look back as you walked away.

You couldn’t figure him out. You couldn’t “predict” him. It seemed like he instinctively dodged every romantic comedy cliche. There were countless melodramatic tropes paved for him, but he always chose to swerve and draw his own patterns. You imagined, he was always the kid that, on his way home from school, would be tempted to mark the perfect white canvas of fresh snow with his footprints - and would do it too, eventually, dragging his feet through the deep drifts - while everyone else just followed the padded path.

Taehyung didn’t seem upset or hurt. He didn’t question your escape nor did he try to make you feel guilty about it. As if the boy refused to see that hurried exit of yours as the door being shut in his face, and, instead, saw it as your trauma of almost loosing him melting away a little more. To Taehyung, your soul needed just a little more convincing before letting him in again and trusting that nothing will happen that could put his life at risk. Not if he could help it.

Apparently, the key point of his strategy was to remind you of how good and fun you were together, often acting like teenagers in love with total disregard for whether the time and place were appropriate. Yet, your displays of affection never crossed the line into something provocative or deprecated. True to his pure and innocent nature, Taehyung’s “moves” always looked playful and, dare you say, cute in everyone’s eyes, with your overflowing fondness towards each other making people around you go “aww”.

And the boy would definitely be lying if he said that your flustered appearance and blushing cheeks didn’t make it that much more fun for him.

“You should be more careful next time, Mrs. Lee,” since you were helping with Taehyung’s bandages more often and leveled up your nursing skills training on him, it wasn’t a rare occurrence for you to look after other patients as well.

“I know, dear. I guess the kettle was just too heavy for me,” the old woman sighed as you wrapped her burnt wrist carefully. Mrs. Lee was a sweet lady - always put together and endlessly welcoming - but a bit too clumsy for her own good. It was her third minor injury this week. Previously, she managed to hit her toe against the bed frame and get a pretty nasty paper cut on her thumb. Ouch. Her soul thought it was 1920s, so maybe people were more careless about their health back then.

“There you are!” Taehyung’s booming voice entered the room before the man himself burst inside, and you didn’t miss the way Mrs. Lee’s eyes lit up. She adored him. Everyone did. “Good morning, Mrs. Lee! New day - new adventure, I see. I’m glad you keep my fiancée on her toes,” Tae winked, and you heard the woman actually giggle. The power he possessed was truly boundless.

“I do what I can,” Mrs. Lee was full on beaming now - bright and happy - the pain in her wrist seemingly forgotten. You smiled to yourself too, finishing up the procedure.

“Mornin’, beautiful,” Taehyung lowered his voice, and it took less than a second for you to start blushing. Blood rushed to your face somewhere between his breath hitting your ear and his lips briefly pressing to your temple. You were used to a lot of “Taehyung things” by this point (barely): holding Taehyung’s hand, brushing Taehyung’s hair while he slept, Taehyung’s fingers dancing across your back while you worked. Always teasing. Sometimes tickling. Like right now. Up and down. Up and down. Down. Down, down. Wait, what?

“Taehyung!” you gasped. He pinched you! He pinched your butt!

Your hand flew to cup the “violated area” (on pure reflex) as you turned, wide-eyed, to Taehyung, who was clearly trying his best to stifle the fit of giggles. He had the audacity to look surprised by your animated reaction, like it wasn’t his intention all along. Oh, he was so amused! The boy quickly hid his hands behind his back as if trying to dispose of the evidence, but you were already on a mission to give him a piece of your mind.

“Out!” you grabbed Taehyung’s arm and proceeded to drag him out of the room, unwilling to scold the men in front of another patient.

“Mrs. Lee, save me!” he pleaded, not really trying to put up a fight, even though he definitely could.

“You are on your own, young man,” the older lady just laughed and, rather entertained, waved the two of you a goodbye.

“What the hell, Taehyung?” you whisper-screamed as soon as the door closed behind him. Your “disapproving wife” mode was all the way on, and you didn’t even know it was a part of your settings in the first place. Taehyung took in your crossed arms and furrowed eyebrows, feeling strangely endeared. Let’s keep it going for a bit, he thought. “That was really inappropriate!”

“Well, if you didn’t scream like that, she wouldn’t even notice. So, objectively, this is your fault,” he argued, mimicking your irritated posture.

“Objective- !? Don’t do this around other patients!” you hissed back, now vaguely aware of the fact that Taehyung was probably messing with you.

“Does it mean I can do it when we are alone?” the boy not-at-all-subtly wiggled his (gorgeous) eyebrows and stepped closer, placing his hands on your waist.

“Well, not anytime soon. You’ve ruined it for yourself,” you were still frowning - in a desperate attempt to appear mad - but your lips were starting to angle up in a smile, treacherously so.

“You are mean,” he pouted. Well, that’s not fair.

“And you are childish.”

“You like it though,” somewhere, in the back of your mind, you were painfully aware of how it all looked. Your palms rested peacefully on his chest, and you smiled at each other without saying a word, yet understanding everything. ‘I do like it. I can’t help it.’ You were in love. Really, really, really in love. “And you are right. It was inappropriate. I’m sorry. I just wanted to tease you and took it too far. It won’t happen again.”

“Thank you,” you sighed and leaned forward, so his lips effortlessly pressed to your forehead. You were so screwed.

After escaping Taehyung’s warm embrace (quite reluctantly), you snuck back into the room. The door clicked upon closing, and you were met Mrs. Lee’s knowing smile.

“Is Taehyung in trouble?” she asked, but, if your own tender smile was any indication, he very obviously wasn’t. You still shook your head ‘no’ and averted your eyes, suddenly shy. The woman laughed quietly at your timidity, while you busied yourself with her wrist. Taehyung’s little “tease” interrupted your work in quite a dramatic way, so you weren’t even sure if the task was completed properly. “Be glad he’s still playful. That boy has eyes only for you. I can tell.”

If you were blushing before, now your face caught on fire. It was one thing to experience Taehyung’s absolute devotion yourself, but to have it pointed out by someone else was another feeling entirely. Once again, you couldn’t help but think that your past-life-self got really lucky with him. Oh.

“How did he propose?” the question halted your movements for a split second. Oh. How did he propose? That’s right. You didn’t know. Because it wasn’t to you. The blush on your cheeks fainted, and you suddenly felt cold. It was so easy to smile just a second ago, but now you had to put in a tremendous effort in order to appear unaffected. Though, if you listened closely, you could still feel your soul sighing in content from having Taehyung so near and so warm, and not so long ago. A bittersweet feeling, but it helped.

“It’s almost time for your check up with Dr. Kim. How about we save that story for later?”

Mrs. Lee nodded, a little upset, and you couldn’t blame her. You’d love to hear all about it yourself. It would hurt even more, sure, but if you were to bet your life on anything, you’d bet it on Taehyung organizing the most wonderful and romantic proposal in the history of mankind. You didn’t dare coming up with something of your own right now, because it simply wouldn’t compare.

Millions of thoughts and questions flooded your mind even before you left Mrs. Lee’s room. It wasn’t really you Taehyung was in love with. Of course, it wasn’t. It was another girl that shared your soul and looked like you. But then... Were you essentially your soul? Did it matter what life made of the rest of you? Was Taehyung in love with your soul exclusively? He said it himself. He was falling deeper in love with you.

Taehyung’s beloved soul was your soul. It was just a lifetime older than he thought.

“Y/N?” Namjoon’s voice pulled you out of your thoughts, and, after looking around for a second, you numbly discovered that your feet didn’t carry the rest of your body too far away from the door. “You okay?”

You nodded, but he didn’t seem convinced. The man was probably on his way to Mrs. Lee, so you had to pull yourself together as to not hold him up.

“Could you, please, stop by my office later? I’d like to talk to you.”

“Sure,” you managed a verbal response this time. Short and sweet. Nice job all around, but it still earned you a concerned look from Namjoon. He regarded you for another moment, then nodded, disappearing behind the door a second later.

You probably should’ve blinked at least once.

It turned out that Dr. Kim unintentionally witnessed the quiet and sweet moment you shared with Taehyung outside Mrs. Lee’s room. The hospital hall could be considered a public place, so the display of affection wasn’t meant to be hidden, yet, Namjoon felt as if he was prying on an intimate exchange. That foreign feeling made him stop and pay attention to something besides science (though, implicitly, the issue at hand was related to it), which said a lot. He was notoriously unaware of... He was notoriously unaware. Period.

That, combined with faint mental notes he made while reading your reports, pushed Dr. Kim to invite you to his office for a private conversation. The way your descriptions of Taehyung’s past and present increased in poetic value as the time went on never really bothered Namjoon, because he could always work around that and still get a lot of valuable information. Plus, your expressiveness made it into a good read.

Your every word became more vibrant and meaningful after he saw the way you looked at your fiancé. You were a terrible actress, and no one knew it better than Kim Namjoon. The man wasn’t being overly dramatic when he confessed to having nightmares in which your acting was so bad that it made Taehyung “snap out of it” and leave. Namjoon bet a lot on you.

It was supposed to be a game of pretend, and he had to make sure it was still the case for you. Was Dr. Kim doing it for science? The man wasn’t sure himself. His research could still become groundbreaking, whether your heart ended up broken or not, but Namjoon just couldn’t stay unaware this time around. So now you were passing from wall to wall in his office, trying not to panic. Trying and failing.

"How much longer will I have to play along? He wants... to do stuff, you know? I am his fiancée,” Namjoon glanced up from his papers, slight alarm in his gaze, so you hurried to clarify. “No, he doesn’t say or do anything. I just feel it.”

"Just tell him he's too weak for that," Dr. Kim shrugged, but then paused for a moment. It’s been a little less than three months. Taehyung was almost completely healthy. “Wait, actually, just tell him that it's against hospital policy. Or both.”

"That's what I tell him, but he's just so damn eager and responsive to everything I do! Not in a gross way, but still! What if he never comes back from it? What if I-,” fall in love before he wakes up? You didn’t finish the thought out loud, but your breathing was rushed and uneven, so he knew. He’s observant at the very least, but it’s more than that. You both knew. Namjoon was surprised at himself, and you were surprised to see his eyes so full of untapped emotion. He looked a little sad, but mostly worried. Maybe a tad bit apologetic. You hoped you imagined a drop of regret in the mix, because that’s what you didn’t feel, despite hurting.

"Do you like him?"

I’m in love with him.

"I do,” you said, defeated, yet, somehow, relieved by acceptance and the openness. For a split second you got scared that Namjoon would pull the plug on the research. “But let me do this. I will never hold it against you.”

The man appeared conflicted, but not nearly enough to drop all the progress you’ve made. To put the work of his life on hold. And you wouldn’t let Namjoon do it, even if he was ready to quit for your sake. You were his partner in crime, just as involved, and your “timeless lover” didn’t make you forget that. At least your heart would be broken for science.

"His feelings for you are not real. Not in this life. Please, remember that and be careful, Y/N".

Yeah. It was a little too late for that.

Maybe you overestimated your own determination to finish the research, or maybe it was harder not to pretend and be in love, with clear mind and a heavy heart. Maybe it was harder to accelerate, knowing that you were gonna crash. That, eventually, Taehyung would come to his senses and leave to live his life.

Truth be told, you hoped it would happen sooner than later. Preferably before you married him, had kids and grew old together. Imagine trying to explain to someone where their whole life went and why another version of them got to live two.

To say that you were torn would be an understatement. Oh, how you wanted to just give in and love him, and be loved! It was agonizing, ironically so, because you couldn’t help but see it as the foreshadowing of the day that his love would be taken away from you, whether you decided to let yourself have it or not.

Your scale was looking more and more like the game of seesaw, refusing to balance, constantly tipping one way or the other. You went from being playful and engaged (no pun intended) to appearing cold and distant to everyone around you, not only Tae. The uncertainty was exhausting, to the point where you missed the days of just being awkward and nervous around “Taehyung the Patient”. Back when your love for him was only a memory that your mind would never be able recall, because, up until this point, it only echoed in the depths of your old soul.

There was no end to this back and forth, it seemed. But when, one day, you saw the way your internal turmoil affected the one you cherished the most, it became exceptionally easy to make a choice.

“Tae, I am leaving for the day,” you cracked open the door to his room and quickly scanned the space to make sure he was there. The lights were off, but as soon as your eyes got used to it, you found Taehyung standing by the window. It wasn’t an unusual sight, since he loved to admire the night sky every chance he got. The moon was full and visible for the first time in weeks, so, of course, the man was there to appreciate it in all its glory.

“See you tomorrow?”

On nights like this you always tried to say goodbye and make your exit swiftly, leaving Taehyung to have his moment of peace, but this time the boy’s profile didn’t seem serene to you. There was no dreamy smile playing on his lips. His eyes weren’t traveling from star to star, looking for constellations. Instead, his lips were stretched thin and pale, and probably bitten in worry. You could see that he was frowning, but the blank look in his eyes was the most concerning.

“Tae?” when he didn’t answer again, you stepped further into the room. The door creaked unpleasantly, pulling Taehyung from his thoughts. At the sight of you something in him moved, but stayed still. It felt like his soul immediately reached out for yours, and, for the first time, he didn’t let its urges guide him. The realization terrified you. He was uncertain. You hated it.

“Hey. Sorry, I didn’t hear you. Are you leaving?” Taehyung asked. He understood that you had to go home sometime, yet, it didn’t make him miss your presence less. The boy never wanted you to leave, and it was always obvious. Except now. Taehyung wasn’t sure if he wanted you to stay, because he wasn’t sure if you’d rather go. He hated it.

“Um, yeah. I was about to head out,” your thumb pointed towards the exit, but you proceeded to move forward and soon stopped, facing Taehyung by the window. “Is everything okay?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t-“

“Tae,” you cut in, suddenly desperate to resolve whatever was troubling him. “You can tell me,” when your fingers moved across the windowsill to touch his, Taehyung held his breath, because you never really initiated physical contact before. Not like this. Your touch was always meant to comfort or calm him. You never did it, because you yourself craved the closeness. “Please, tell me.”

“It’s you,” Taehyung breathed, and your fingers froze millimeters away from his. It broke the boy’s heart a little, but he couldn’t keep his own muddle to himself anymore. Because you did initiate touches before. You were utterly selfish and demanding when it came to keeping him close, and it was so very charming, he couldn’t stand being away. Taehyung felt needed. Sadly, that car crash seemed to have broken something between you. And it split his life in two.

“I don’t recognize you,” for a moment you thought that his old memories were leaving him, confabulation gradually wearing off, but no. The memories of two lives weighed him down, conflicting and contradicting each other. It pained you to see him so lost.

“And I don’t feel like you recognize me, either. Most of the time you look at me like I am a stranger,” Taehyung’s voice started wavering, confused and sorrowful, as if the boy never imagined that he would be saying this to you. Your fingers moved again, completely on their own, to touch him. To comfort him. “At first I thought that, maybe, you were just in shock after the accident. Maybe, you thought you were going to lose me. And I get it, I do. I can see that you still love me,” oh, thank God, he saw it. You wouldn’t be able to live with yourself, if he lost his faith in your love - the only thing he wholeheartedly connected to in this world, in this time. “But it’s been months of up and downs, and I don’t understand, and- it’s just starting to hurt.“

Taehyung gasped a couple of seconds before your lips met his, because it was only the third of the things you did. First, you intertwined your fingers and tugged him closer. Second, your right hand flew up to rest on the back of his neck, pulling him down. Third. The moment fell into complete stillness as you stayed there, unmoving, with your lips pressed together way too tightly. If he was going to feel your kiss for the first time in months, you were going to make it count. You wanted it to leave a mark on his heart, deep enough to reach his soul.

And maybe that kiss felt like trying too hard at first - because, admittedly, you were a little desperate to heal his doubtful mind - but it all clicked into place, when his fingertips reached to touch the side of your face. Still unsure and nervous, but slowly starting to believe that it was really happening. In that moment, you heard your soul whisper something not so secret: it, and you, already knew how to kiss him right. You knew how to kiss Taehyung to make him smile. You knew how to kiss him to drive him crazy with want. You knew. So you pulled back to lessen the pressure, letting your lips move smoothly and tenderly against his. You knew how to kiss Taehyung to make him feel loved.

"Do I kiss the same?” you asked, breathless, hoping against all hope that you really did kiss his lips right now just as you kissed him a lifetime ago. The man swallowed shakily, nodding his head. Taehyung didn’t move away, not even a little, as if he simply missed the feeling of your breath on his skin. To him, there was something so singular and intimate about the face-to-face, skin-to-skin closeness and sharing the same air, that you never even had the “big spoon/little spoon discussion”. The pair of you always fell asleep and woke up facing each other, morning breath be damned.

“Yes. Yes, you do,” his hands cupped your face - understandably urgent, but still so very gentle - and he dove right back into the kiss. You had no choice but to keep up, because Taehyung seemed determined to have all the wasted time made up for. It wasn’t long before he lost himself in you: hands in your hair, fingers and thumbs; deep little sighs and sweet noises against your lips. The way Taehyung moved became almost chaotic as he tried to find some balance between holding you close and not breaking his ribs all over again.

While Taehyung was quick to melt into the kiss, you took your time, letting the inevitable impact build and build under your skin - with every slide of his lips, with every touch of his fingers - to, eventually, hit you all at once like a tidal wave. Taehyung wasn’t exploring you like this for the first time, (even though, judging by how eager he was, you wouldn’t be able to tell), but to you, in this body at least, it was the first. And, oh, what an absolutely maddening ride. To top it all off, you forgot to take into consideration that, as well as you knew how to make his body tick, Taehyung was just as knowledgeable about your weaknesses. Within minutes, naturally, he managed to make you mewl and pant, and tremble against him.

“Tae,” your attempt to pull away failed, so his name got muffled by his own mouth. You smiled at his unwillingness to stop kissing, but tried again, pushing lightly at his chest. Nightshift nurses took their duty seriously. “Tae, we should stop.”

The man made a faint noise of disapproval at the loss of contact, but nodded and gave you some space. It felt as if your lips would never stop buzzing.

“Sorry, it’s just,” he paused, catching his breath, and no one could understand him better than you. That was intense. “It’s been so long.”

Taehyung’s hold on your waist tightened, and you could feel those words coming. The anticipation in your chest was tangible, yet you’ve never felt more content.

“I love you.”

…

“I love you, too.”

Looking back, yes, it should have been an awkward interaction for you. By all accounts. Faking affection towards someone you barely knew, just to get data. Ridiculous. But… If someone asked you about it right now, you’d say that pretending to be in love with him was the easiest thing you ever had to do.

So you let yourself love Taehyung for another day. For another week. Trusted him with your heart completely, without caution or doubt. Became adorably clingy, just the way he remembered you. Whatever common sense that was left in your system was used to dodge the wedding plans discussions, and it was easier, too, because you could just kiss the boy into silence, and he would never complain about that or suspect anything. Taehyung just figured, you missed him just as much as he missed you. But, oh, how you wanted to indulge in those discussions sometimes.

Namjoon still tried his best to forewarn and protect you, but, at the same time, he understood that it wasn’t his choice to make anymore or his place to judge your decision. All he could do was go through your daily reports and gather all information possible. No one could halt the research, simply because it became more than just a research to you. Namjoon did hope, though, that it would come to an end before the point where your heartbreak overshadowed the triumph of science.

And it did.

“I will love you forever,” he said the night before, as a goodbye you both thought would only last till morning. You smiled, letting him kiss your forehead, and replied: “You better.”

Your coat wasn’t even off yet, when you spotted Namjoon coming out of Taehyung’s room. He was smiling to himself as he closed the door, and then his eyes found yours. Slowly, you moved towards him, even though Namjoon didn’t call. Not with words or gestures at least. The man’s smile turned into something undefinable, an anxious mix of dread and hopefulness. You finally stopped in front of him, eyes pleading.

“He’s back,” Namjoon said, clearly, but why did it also sound like “He’s gone” to you? That must have been the somber undertones in his voice.

“Oh,” you exhaled, fumbling with buttons on your jacket. Okay. It’s alright. You knew this was coming.

“He wants to talk to you,” the man continued, and, before you could panic, his hand landed on your shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “You are going to be fine.”

Namjoon looked deep into your wide, petrified eyes and smiled again, a lot warmer this time. His other hand lifted fluidly, and you followed its direction to breathe in... and breathe out.

“Y/N,” Namjoon called, finally getting your gaze to focus on him. “Thank you. For everything.”

Your eyes suddenly watered, and you couldn’t help but smile at the man. He was your clarity and reason in all this madness.

“No problem, Dr. Kim,” you raised your fist for him to bump, making the lovely dimples appear on his cheeks. “For science,” Namjoon laughed at that, and quickly bumped your awaiting fist, before wrapping you in a tight hug.

“For science.”

“Hey,” the door creaked right as you said that, making your whole body wince. Great start. It’s wasn’t a loud hey in the first place, so you prepared to say it again, oblivious to the fact that Taehyung’s attention was already on you.

“Hey,” he echoed, straightening up a little. No longer oblivious, you let yourself look at him. He was sitting on the bed with a book in his hands, and you noted that it was opened on one of the later pages. He didn’t start from the beginning, but continued reading it. “Please, come in.”

The boy crossed his legs, making more room for you on the bed, but you moved to stand at the foot of it. He didn’t question your choice of position, wisely deciding to give you some much needed space. In that moment, it suddenly hit you that only yesterday you could come in and practically jump into his arms, starting Taehyung’s morning with a kiss. It wasn’t the case anymore.

A moment of awkward silence stretched through the air, but, eventually, you gathered enough courage to speak first.

“Do you remember-"

"I remember everything," Taehyung deadpanned, and you nodded, swallowing some of the nerves. Namjoon suspected he would. This was no ordinary case. “And I am glad I do.”

The addition made you look up from the floor. Taking a chance to study Taehyung closer, you didn’t expect to find the look in his eyes so... sympathetic. And curious. And anticipating.

“Oh, God, Tae,” sudden embarrassment washed over you, and your hands came up to cover your flushed face. “I am so sorry. I feel so terrible-“

“What? Why are you apologizing?” Taehyung was taken aback, seemingly surprised by the outburst of guilt. Trying to explain your embarrassment was, somehow, even more embarrassing.

“You weren’t in your right mind, and I sort of took advantage of that,” truth be told, you never saw it that way before. Not until you met the real Taehyung. “With all the kisses and touches. I should’ve stopped it. It’s your body, and I had no right-“

“No, no, no. I get it,” as if pulled by some force, the boy shuffled across the bed on his knees, eventually stopping in front of you. His fingers wrapped around your wrists, gently moving your hands away from your face. “You had to keep the story going for me. Dr. Kim explained everything.”

‘Right. Keeping the story going. That’s all it was,’ you thought ruefully, but said:

“Thank you for understanding,” it was easy to smile at Taehyung, even now, so you did. The boy smiled back, releasing your wrists, and, strangely, you didn’t feel like keeping distance between you anymore. “I feel a little less perverted.”

“Good. You should,” Taehyung nodded, looking proud of the fact that he didn’t let you think badly of yourself. “So,” the man shrugged innocently, letting his hands fall to rest of his thighs. “You said you sort of took advantage...,” Taehyung’s eyes glimmered mischievously, and you noticed his fingers tapping a playful rhythm on his lap. Wait... “Does it mean that you liked it? If it was to your advantage...”

Was he teasing you right now?

“Oh, wow. That was so bad,” you burst out laughing, which felt kind of anticlimactic, but so so needed. That’s Taehyung for you. The boy laughed along, showing off that infectious boxy smile of his. “How about I leave now, for awhile, and you come up with something better, okay?”

“Wait, wait,” Tae reached for your hand again, when you made a move towards the door. Both of you knew that you weren’t really leaving. “Do you want to get a cup of coffee? With me? Or tea? You like tea, right?” it’s like the boy wanted to prove that he remembered these things about you. It was sweet.

“Tae, are you sure? I mean, it wasn’t really you who liked me-“

“I said I remember everything, and I really like what I remember. About you. About us. I mean, if anything, the question is did you like the-past-life me, because, let me tell you, he’s not that different from the guy standing right here.”

“Well, obviously. The soul is the same.”

“See? Something tells me you weren’t faking it, not all the time. Not when it mattered,” his words carried certain weight, like he not only remembered, but, miraculously, experienced everything that happened. “So, did you like him?” Yes. Easy. “Do you like me?” Ooh, a little tougher. He did look exactly the same. (Duh.) Yet, there was something that made him feel more aware, more awake. More... here.

“If you remember everything, like you said, then you should know the answer to the first question.” I loved him.

“I do,” Taehyung said, turning completely serious for a moment, and you were thankful that he didn’t take your feelings lightly. “That’s why I-,” the boy cut himself short and bashfully shook his head. Cute. “Sorry, nevermind. It’s cheesy and a little too far.”

“No, tell me,” you tugged at his hand, consequently realizing that it was still holding yours. The comfortable nature of it didn’t surprise you. “I’ll be the judge.”

"I think he left something with me, and,” Taehyung’s free hand landed on his chest, near his heart, emphasizing where the change happened. “Who knows, maybe we will prove that eternal soulmates exist too," the boy was beaming, so proud of his charming line, and you didn’t make him wait too long for a reaction. Your cheeks got much warmer, and you lowered your gaze, trying to hide a shy smile that threatened to hurt your jaw with how wide it was.

“You were right. It is cheesy. But, maybe, not too far fetched.”

You cried yourself to sleep that night, realizing that, in some strange and gut wrenching way, you lost someone you loved. Forever. That bright and ridiculously romantic Taehyung from 1960s was gone. But you smiled before finally dozing off, thinking that you gained someone who could make you heart flutter just the same. Perhaps, equally bright and romantic. You just needed to give it a little time.

You fell in love with Taehyung once. You could do it again. Namjoon still had to prove it, but his soul belonged with yours, and...

He promised to love you forever, after all.

["thank you for stopping me, when i- uh, when i wanted to take things a little too far."

"um, yeah, no problem. though, i must admit, it wasn't too easy."

"how so? was i- was i pushing you too much?"

"no! no. it's just that- sometimes, you and... what you did... made me forget about, well, everything."

"oh? ... OH! i see..."]

a/n: thanks for reading! i really hope you enjoyed! for more of my stories go for masterlist here and here. feedback, as always, is needed and will be very much appreciated.

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#bts #bangtan #kim taehyung #reincarnation au #soulmate au #fluff #angst #fanfic #scenario #scenarios #story #oneshot #long #sfw #soft #my post #armyart #bts v fluff #bts v angst #writing

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